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Tripogon loliiformis plant. Wikimedia Commons.

As the pace of climate change quickens and increasingly frequent ‘extreme weather’ events threaten food security globally, finding or developing new food crops able to survive and thrive even under extreme climatic conditions (notably, long periods of water scarcity) will be critical – to farmers’ livelihoods and to our survival as a species.

Unless they can be made more drought-tolerant, crops such as rice and maize (corn) will become increasingly less viable in a world strapped for resources and battered by climate change. If we’re to be able to feed the world in 2050, we need sustainable, stress-tolerant, drought-resistant food crops.

In their quest to develop crops that fit the bill, scientists at Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities have been investigating an unassuming little grass known as Tripogon loliiformis.

T. loliiformis, a species native to Australia and PNG, is a member of a select group of vascular plants that possess highly sophisticated stress-tolerance mechanisms which help them withstand extreme environmental conditions and reach productive maturity even in water- and nutrient-poor soils.

The QUT researchers found that the hardy native grass has an exceptional capacity to resist dessication during long periods without water, and to spring back to life when rain arrives.

Indeed, they believe T. loliiformis could be the genetic key to the creation of hardy, high-yielding tropical crops better able than their predecessors to survive extreme weather events – crucial in a time of escalating climate change and competition for scarce resources (including food itself).

T. loliiformis belongs to a group of vascular plants that possess unique stress-tolerance mechanisms enabling them to survive extreme environments and grow in nutrient- and water-poor soils. Wikimedia Commons.



QUT glasshouse trials on key genes from T. loliiformis show that when hydrated, this remarkable plant regenerates – even after periods of prolonged water scarcity, when it appears to have dried out completely.

In a paper published in PLOS Genetics on 3 December 2015, QUT scientists Brett Williams, Sagadevan Mundree and colleagues detail the extreme-weather-tolerant characteristics of “resurrection plants” such as T. loliiformis. The term resurrection plants refers to a small group of vascular plant species possessing unique stress-tolerance mechanisms that enable them to survive extreme environments and thrive in water-deprived and nutrient-poor soils.

The QUT researchers showed that ‘resurrection’ species have achieved this by manipulating sugar metabolism to boost their tolerance to desiccation.

The finding should help them compile a shortlist of likely ‘candidate genes’: those that may prove useful in raising the stress tolerance of food crops such as rice, maize (corn) and sorghum, all of which are closely related to T. loliiformis.



“It’s an important step along a genetic path that we hope will lead to scientists being able to develop more robust crop varieties, which are essential for sustainable food production,” Williams says.

Mundree posits a possible reason for the species’ unusual stress-tolerance: “The dried grass accumulates trehalose (a non-reducing sugar found in plants), [which] triggers autophagy (a process [that] allows the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components). The levels of autophagy are controlled by the resurrection plant to prevent death upon drying.”



The apparent role of autophagy in mitigating stress, decelerating ageing and preventing programmed cell death in naturally resilient plant species may prove significant in generating new, stress-tolerant food and fibre crops.

In the next stage of the project – in trial glasshouse crops of rice and chickpeas – the QUT team will look to provide proof that their concepts can be applied productively in large-scale commercial settings. They hope to start field trials within three to five years.

Read the abstract of the paper here.

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