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Answer to water shortage: genetic engineering
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THE United Nations has called drought the world’s costliest natural disaster, both financially, imposing an annual cost of US$6 billion to US$8 billion, and in human terms.
Since 1900, it has affected 2 billion people, leading to more than 11 million deaths. That is because so much of the world is vulnerable; currently affected areas include Australia, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, North and South America, and the Middle East.
Given that agriculture accounts for 70 percent of water consumption, on average, worldwide, it seems logical that this sector should be the focus of conservation measures. And, in fact, a proven technology exists that could go a long way toward reducing the impact of drought: genetic engineering (GE).
Sometimes called “genetic modification,” GE enables plant breeders to make existing crop plants do new things, such as conserve water. Even with research and development hampered by resistance from activists and excessive government regulation, drought-resistant GE crop varieties are emerging from the development pipeline in many parts of the world.
Over the last two decades, such crop varieties have been cultivated on more than 1.5 billion hectares by more than 17 million farmers in some 30 countries — without disrupting a single ecosystem or causing so much as a stomachache.
Most of these new crop varieties are designed to resist herbicides. But, in the long term, the greatest boon of all, for both food security and the environment, will likely be the ability of new crop varieties to tolerate periods of drought and other water-related stresses. Even a small reduction in the amount of water used for irrigation could have huge benefits, especially in drought conditions.
To develop such varieties, plant biologists identified genes that regulate water use and transferred them into important crop plants, enabling them to grow with less or lower-quality water, such as water that has been recycled or is high in natural mineral salts.
Egyptian researchers have shown that by transferring a single gene from barley to wheat, the plants can tolerate reduced watering for a longer period of time.
Resilient agriculture
This new, drought-resistant variety requires only one-eighth as much irrigation as conventional wheat; in some deserts, it can be cultivated with rainfall alone.
Molecular genetic engineering technology can conserve water in other ways, as well. One-third of irrigated land worldwide is not suitable for growing crops because of the presence of salt — the result of repeated fertilization. To regain the more than 200,000 hectares of irrigated land that is lost to cultivation annually, scientists have enhanced the salt tolerance of crops as diverse as tomatoes and canola. The transformed plants can grow in salty soil and be irrigated with brackish water, conserving fresh water for other uses.
As water scarcity increases, drought-stricken crops wither, and food prices rise, the need for resilient agriculture will become more obvious and more urgent. With more rational public policy, we can meet that need now.
Henry I. Miller is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2014.www.project-syndicate.org
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