Plant genomics may double crop efficiency.

• Position: Horticulture - Brief Article

Environmental stresses such as frost, heat, and drought cause massive crop-yield losses each year--more, in fact, than those from insects and weeds. To combat such losses, Ray Bressan, professor of horticulture and director of Purdue University's Center for Plant Environmental Stress Physiology, West Lafayette, Ind., and Mike Hasegawa, a professor of horticulture, are using plant genomics to combat stress losses.

A small weed that is a cousin to the mustard plant, Arabidopsis--which is to plant scientists what the lab mouse is to medical researchers--is leading them and other scientists around the world to a better understanding of how plants withstand these stresses. Scientists use Arabidopsis to learn the function of plant genes. This is done by creating a plant which is missing a single gene and growing it to maturity to determine that gene's function.

Purdue researchers have created more than 300,000 genetically altered plants, and scientists at other institutions have created hundreds of thousands of additional genetically altered strains. "For all practical purposes, the genome is saturated; there has been a mutation for...