A native Australian grass that 'plays dead' during droughts could provide genetic keys to help world food crops withstand climate change.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 4 minutes 34 seconds 4 m 34 s Queensland University of Technology's Professor Sagadevan Mundree and research fellow Dr Brett Williams discuss resurrection grass ( Cassie Hough ) Download 2.1 MB

Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have studied the native grass tripogon loliiformis's ability to survive extreme environmental stresses.

Biocommodities deputy director Professor Sagadevan Mundree said the plant could lose up to 90 per cent of its relative water content and remain in that state for months.

"When it does receive water it will actually resurrect, which means that existing tissue which was dehydrated will recover, rather than just produce new fresh tissue," Professor Mundree said.

These 'resurrection' plants are found right across Australia and have been studied for years, but until now scientists have never known how the plants regenerate tissue.

The fact that the cells can remain alive even when they are dry led the researchers to look at the different strategies that cells in plants and animals use to suppress cell death pathways.

Professor Sagadevan Mundree, Dr Brett Williams and Hao Long have researched resurrection grass and its implications for helping crops withstand climate change. ( Supplied: QUT )

Research fellow Dr Brett Williams said the study had shown the plants' ability came from the way they manipulated sugar.

"One of the mechanisms that this resurrection plant uses is that it increases the amount of trehalose, a small reducing sugar, which most land plants do not accumulate to great levels," Dr Williams said.

"We believe that it uses this sugar to regulate pro-survival strategies."

Discovery could help scientists develop robust crop varieties

Professor Mundree said the research had implications for global food crops such as chickpeas and rice.

"It's an important step along a genetic path that we hope will lead to scientists being able to develop more robust crop varieties that can withstand the uncertainty of climate change, whilst still producing maximum yields," he said.

"We are actually identifying some of the strategies that we could apply to other crop plants.

"Part of this could be looking at the genes and regulatory systems it has, that allow it to cope under such severe stress.

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"And whether a single gene from this plant, when transferred to a crop plant such as chickpeas or rice, could enhance its stress tolerance."

The next step will be to further investigate how that is regulated, and the researchers believe that is in the way plant balances energy use.

"These plants, even when they're drying out, unlike the majority of other plants, will not flower: they suppress flowering," Professor Mundree said.

"Once you've watered it quickly after it has rehydrated it will set seed and flower.

"So it's investigating how the plant regulates that energy metabolism between survival and setting seed."