Page 6 - PERIODIC Magazine Issue 5

H arvest for the World?

The world’s population is projected to increase from 7.4bn to 8.1bn by
2025, according to the UN-affiliated Food and Agriculture Organisation,
which forecasts that 80% of the increase needed in crop production will
need to come from higher yields because of the limited scope to turn more
land over to agricultural use. Genetic modification can boost crop yields,

but has its limits in what can be achieved and has yet to achieve worldwide
public acceptance.

Research by the Davis group in collaboration with Plants were harvested after re-watering to assess biomass
Matthew Paul at Rothamsted Research shows promise recovery after the drought period.
for a new way forward. They have created a synthetic
molecule that when applied to crops can increase the The study showed that the T6P spray created a ‘pulse’
size and starch content of wheat grains by up to 20%. which resulted in more sucrose being drawn into the
The results of the study, published in Nature*, detail the grain to make starch, increasing the wheat grain size and
method, based on using synthetic precursors of the sugar yield by 20%. The study also demonstrated that the spray
trehalose-6-phosphate (T6P), which regulates sucrose use could enhance plants’ ability to recover from drought.
and allocation in plants. The more T6P that is available to And because T6P performs the same function in all plants,
wheat grains as they grow, the greater the yield. However, the technique could potentially be applied to many other
in its normal state, T6P cannot be taken up by plants. crops.
By attaching different chemical groups, the researchers Professor Ben Davis said: ‘The tests we conducted in the
developed a plant-permeable analogue of T6P that could lab show real promise for a technique that, in the future,
be taken up by plants and released in sunlight. could radically alter how we farm not just wheat but many
different crops. The “green revolution” in the 20th century
The modified T6P was tested in the lab under controlled
environmental conditions. Wheat plants were grown until was a period where more resilient, high-yield wheat
each plant flowered, after which varying concentrations of varieties were created, an innovation that has been claimed
T6P solution were added to different plants to assess the to have helped save one billion lives. By developing new
effect that each concentration had on growth. The wheat chemical methods based on an understanding of biology,
was sprayed with the solutions either on the ears or the we can secure our food sources and add to this legacy.
whole plant at intervals of five days after the plants first That way we can make sure as many people have access to
flowered, with just one application sufficient to increase enough food as possible and that the less fortunate can be
yield. The plants were then harvested once ripe, and the rescued from unexpected hardship.’
grains weighed and analysed for the amount of starch
and protein present. To test the responses to drought Reference:
conditions, plants were grown until just before they Nature 540, 574–578 (22 December 2016) doi:10.1038/
developed stems. They were then deprived of water for nature20591
ten days, with T6P solutions being added on the ninth day.

6
Periodic The Magazine of the Department of Chemistry