GMO Tobacco Plants Reveal the Promise of Hyper-Productive Food Crops

Researchers specializing in genetic modification have developed a super-powered strain of tobacco plants that grow substantially faster and more efficiently than conventional crops, according to a new report published in the journal Science.

Stephen Long, a professor at the University of Illinois, who led a research team including postdoctoral researchers Katarzyna Glowacka and Johannes Kromdijk, is optimistic that the research could prefigure an age of highly productive farming, particularly for the most vital food crops.

"We don't know for certain this approach will work in other crops, but because we're targeting a universal process that is the same in all crops, we're pretty sure it will," he said.

How did the experiment work? The researchers inserted genes into the DNA of tobacco plants that they believed would increase three specific proteins that are involved in photosynthesis, the process of turning sunlight into energy.

"The objective was simply to boost the level of three proteins already present in tobacco," Long explained.

By boosting these proteins, the researchers reasoned that the plants would grow more with the same amount of sunlight. Once they had produced multiple modified tobacco plants, they selected the three most productive specimens and planted them alongside regular tobacco crops.

Of the modified plants, two were 20 percent more productive than the standard strain, and one was 14 percent more productive.

In other words, the GMOs were bigger and better.

But the point of the research, which was sponsored by the philanthropic Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is not to make the tobacco industry more efficient. The goal of the work was to show that these kinds of gains were possible with genetic engineering, and the foundation contributed to the study on the condition that any products that are developed from the research will be licensed so that African and South Asian farmers can use the technology without restriction.

The holy grail of this kind of research is super-productive food crops.

"Tobacco is grown for its leaves, which were substantially increased," said Kromdijk, one of the post-doctoral researchers. "But in food crops, it will be whatever we eat from the plant - the fruit, the seeds or the roots - that we will need to increase."

There's not much use in soybean plant with extra-large leaves, after all.

The press release for the study notes that increasing photosynthesis in food-producing plants like wheat, soy and rice results in more seeds — and this means that if the alterations made to the tobacco plants can be replicated in other crops, scientists may be able to drastically increase humanity's ability to feed itself.

"The United Nations predicts that by 2050 we're going to need to produce about 70 percent more food on the land we're currently using," said Long.

"This finding offers some rare good news at a time of dire forecasts of future food shortages," adds Glowacka, the other post-doctoral researcher.

If the goal is to produce better food crops, why did the researchers choose to experiment of tobacco?

Tobacco plants, it turns out, have relatively easy-to-manipulate genetic codes compared to other crops. Nevertheless, the researchers hope their methods will be more broadly applicable.

This research follows a pessimistic report from the New York Times in October, which suggested that genetic modification has not led to increased crop yields over and above the success of conventional breeding practices. Though the research from Long's team is preliminary, proof that their findings are robust may completely undermine the Times' recent dire assessment.

In the Times' own article on Long's research, reporter Justin Gillis pointed out that conventional plant breeders are lucky to produce productivity gains of 1 or 2 percent, which appear minuscule compared to the new study's results.

"My attitude is that it is very important to have these new technologies on the shelf now because it can take 20 years before such inventions can reach farmer's fields," Long said. "If we don't do it now, we won't have this solution when we need it."

Full study at Science>>

Photo credit: Emw via Wikimedia Commons