GM Crops: Seeds to weather drought
The Birmingham News
Kent Faulk
News staff writer
July 24, 2007
Here’s an excerpt from a great article on GM crops by Kent Faulk of The Birmingham News…
When the rain stops falling, Alabama farmers have few options to keep their crops alive until the weather changes - find a way to irrigate or pray.
Scientists aim to give farmers a little more breathing room in the future by breeding or genetically altering plants so that they need less water while producing the same amount of crops or more.
"It really doesn't matter whether you're a cotton farmer in Alabama or a dry land corn farmer in South Dakota," said Robb Fraley, chief technology officer at Monsanto. "Everybody is interested in drought tolerance because just about every geography every three or four years faces some type of drought or water stress."
For example, Monsanto spends more than $2 million a day on breeding and genetic research to develop drought-tolerant plants, improve the quality of plants, or make crops less susceptible to weeds and insects.
Several hundred people at the St. Louis-based company work on drought-tolerance alone, company officials said.
Monsanto has done early testing on genetically engineered corn and cotton, two of Alabama's biggest crops.
Some varieties of corn tested have shown 10 percent to 15 percent higher yields compared to standard corn exposed to the same levels of water, Fraley said. "That's a huge economic advantage," he said.
Mark Lawson, corn yield and stress lead for the company, said he hopes the company will have a product to offer farmers soon after 2010.
A drought-tolerant cottonseed may be available between 2016 and 2018 or so, said Fred Perlak, director of cotton technology for Monsanto. He said company researchers are aiming to develop cotton plants that will produce as much cotton as traditional plants but with 20 percent less water.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agriculture Research Service in Tifton, Ga., also is working to develop drought-tolerant peanuts through traditional breeding….
Full article at The Birmingham News.
