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AUS – FROST TOLERANT GM WHEAT
22 November 2007 Source: Molecular Plant Breeding CRC
Source: http://www.molecularplantbreeding.com/news/releases/071015.asp
ANTARCTIC GENES TO BE USED IN FROST TOLERANT GM WHEAT
The Molecular Plant Breeding Cooperative Research Centre (MPBCRC) is aiming to develop genetically modified (GM) wheat with enhanced tolerance to frost.
The project is backed by a group of Australian farmers who have formed the company, Green Blueprint International Ltd (GBI), and lodged a prospectus to raise $2 million to fund the research.
The partners aim to develop frost tolerant wheat varieties using a gene from Antarctic Hairgrass, one of the few plants to successfully colonise the icy continent. The frost tolerant gene creates a protein that inhibits ice crystal growth in the plant.
Western Australian farmer John Stone said that GBI was formed in response to grower concerns over frost damage. “Frost damage to Australia’s national wheat crop costs farmers around $100 million a year,” he said.
Growers in high frost risk areas are frequently required to use ‘frost avoidance’ strategies, such as delayed planting to avoid flowering and early grain-fill taking place during the peak frost period.
Once the first marketable products carrying the IRIP technology are developed and tested, seed producer-distributors will be engaged to take the product to market.
MPBCRC Chief Executive Officer, Dr Glenn Tong said that he was very pleased that his organisation had been chosen to undertake this important research. “We are delighted to be working so closely with grain growers on this project. They came to us with a serious problem and we are going to try to solve it for them using state of the art biotechnology.”
“Frost is a highly intractable problem, with over 30 years of traditional breeding not making much of a dent. We hope that using gene technologies, we can make some significant headway in this project,” Dr Tong said.
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