GM techniques used to increase salt resistance in cereal crops
Mark Tester is applying GM techniques to cereal crops, turning on or off particular genes in particular sections of plants. 75% of Australia's wheat crop is stressed by salinity. An English moss has great abilities in removing salt from its roots. The gene was isolated and inserted into rice and barley. Now these crops behave in the same way, pumping salt out of their roots. They have become salt resistant varieties of these plants.
Robyn Williams: This week, after what seemed like a prolonged slumber, GM technology has surfaced again as an issue. It won't be pivotal, I suspect, in this election year but it is under discussion. Here's Belinda Barr in Adelaide with one promising line of GM research.
Belinda Barr: Glowing genes, salt pumps and genetic engineering are all on the research agenda of Professor Mark Tester, an ARC Federation Fellow working with the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics. With the use of new molecular biology techniques, Mark and his research team are developing improved cereal crops and the results are looking interesting.
Mark Tester: Well, what we're trying to do, Belinda, is not just turn on genes or turn off genes or slam genes in like some of the major companies are doing, but we're trying to take a more subtle approach to a GM method of manipulating genes by just turning on genes in specific cell types rather than in every part of the plant. This is particularly important for salinity tolerance and stress tolerance in general because a lot of the genes can actually be damaging when they're in the wrong cells, yet when they're put in the right cells they can be really beneficial for the plant.
Belinda Barr: So your focus is on salinity.
Mark Tester: Yes, salinity tolerance is affecting about three-quarters of Australia's wheat crop at the moment and it's probably a problem that's getting worse, especially in Western Australia. What we're trying to do is manipulate the way plants move sodium into the plant and within the plant. So sodium, which is in the salt you put on your fish and chips, is highly toxic at high concentrations in plants and we're just trying to keep the toxic salt out of the shoot. The shoot is up in the air, it's dry up there and the plant really has problems managing the salt that gets up to the shoot. So we're just trying to keep it out in the first place.
Belinda Barr: You mentioned you're going to be inserting a new gene into wheat and barley, how will this new gene work? Where's it from?
Mark Tester: We can manipulate different genes but a particularly exciting one is from a moss, of all places, in fact it's a moss from Cambridgeshire wood, and this moss for some reason that I still don't understand has a special type of salt pump which extrudes salt out of the cells, and it's a pump that's not found in higher plants, so it's not found in trees and in wheat and in most grasses that we'd walk across on the lawn. As I say, I don't know why it's not in those plants and why it's in a moss from a dank, wet Cambridgeshire wood, but it is, and we're now able to turn on this gene in the roots, in particular, of plants such as rice and barely, and that pumps the salt back out of the cells. Some salt leaks in, we want to get it back out before it makes trouble.
Belinda Barr: So it's an active salt pump?
Mark Tester: Yes. Plants have salt pumps already but they are a different type and this is giving the plants a second way of pumping salt out of cells that they've never had before.
Belinda Barr: So when will farmers have access to this new technology?
Mark Tester: At the moment we're building plants that are expressing this gene down in the roots, and in the laboratory they look like they're having some pretty big, very exciting effects on salinity tolerance. We now need to bulk up the seeds for field trials and those will be planned for the next couple of years. Should they prove successful and the technology is robust then we'll be moving into more commercial-scale production within the decade, certainly.
Belinda Barr: So you've got a GM approach, how's the pathway to market looking?
Mark Tester: Oh dear! Well, GM is an interesting issue. It's not a simple debate and I think that's a real pity because GM is a technology which is actually a natural technology from natural soil bacteria and, like a lot of technologies, it depends on how you use it. The way it has been adopted by genetic manipulation scientists and so on, it can do things that's never been possible before and that's dangerous. It is by definition dangerous because it is completely novel, and so we all have the right to ask good questions and should ask good questions about that sort of application of the technology.
But sometimes the technology can be used in ways that are not that significantly different to the manipulation of genes that's been done for the last 10,000 years by plant breeders, and I think we should be asking different questions of the GM technology when they're being applied to, for example, manipulate plant genes in plants. So I would hope that the debate can become a little more mature, a little more subtle, and we don't just say 'technology: good or evil' but actually ask how the technology is being used.
Belinda Barr: And farmers would be relatively receptive to this new technology given that it's a salt tolerant plant for their land?
Mark Tester: Yes, I think most farmers are very positive about GM technologies because it has advantages for their productivity, it has advantages for the sustainable use of their land as well. So I think GM crops have a great opportunity for both environmental benefits and commercial benefits for the farmers. The gap in all of this debate, I think, is the perceptible benefit for the consumer. I think this sort of technology that we're using still doesn't give a perceptible benefit to the consumer...I think it does actually, it's a small one though in that it helps us maintain our environment better and helps the farmer produce food at a reasonable price, but it's not a huge benefit for the consumer, and so consumers are still cautious. So I think that's the main risk for the Australian farmer, is the loss of markets. But the evidence out there is whenever a new country opens up to a new sale of GM, they just get bought. So I think ultimately the bottom line is that people actually will in the majority buy GM products when they are in front of them, and hopefully in front of them in an informed manner.
Belinda Barr: Mark Tester, it sounds fascinating. Thanks very much for your time and we look forward to seeing what eventuates.
Mark Tester: Yes, and let's just hope we can convert it. I think it's for real though, yes.
Robyn Williams: Mark Tester, Federation Fellow in Adelaide, and if you're wondering how he came across that moss gene in a Cambridge wood, well, that's where he was before returning to Australia. Mark Tester was with Belinda Barr.
- Mark Tester
- Federation Fellow (Australian Research Council)
Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics
- Belinda Barr
- State FarmBis Coordinator
Adelaide South Australia
- Robyn Williams
- David Fisher