From: Robert Bradbury (bradbury@genebee.msu.su)
Date: Sat Jan 08 2000 - 06:42:37 MST
On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Bryan Moss wrote:
> Are any organisations developing GM crops specifically
> tailored to grow in harsh climates (extreme cold, drought,
> etc)? Wouldn't it make sense to have a non-profit
> organisation developing such crops with the explicit purpose
> of eradicating hunger in the third world? It would be hard
> for the anti-GM fanatics to oppose such an organisation.
>
I believe the Rockefeller Foundation may be involved in doing
some nutritional engineering. I think several governments
are pushing on salt tolerance. To go much further in cold,
drought, etc. we probably need more genomes done. We have
to take whole sets of genes and move them from the adapted
species into the food crops or move the "food" genes into
the environmentally adapted crops. The 1 gene at a time
approach would take a while and be fairly expensive because
we are still missing vital information on what 30-40% of the
genes do. You can bet that a lot of them are environment
adaptor genes.
Robert
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