The amount of water that plants use is crucial to how well they grow. As the world population grows and more land is utilized for housing instead of food production, farmers will need to grow crops in locations previously unsuited for plant cultivation. Creating plants that can withstand long periods of drought or high salt content in soil and groundwater will help people to grow crops in formerly inhospitable places. (3) |  This is a picture of drought tolerant corn on the right and normal corn on the left. Picture provided by biology-blog.com |
Water tolerance in plants is when plants do not need as much water as normal plants to grow as much as the farmers need. "Water is one of the most important inputs to agriculture. Even a slight water deficit can cause great stress on a crop, significantly lowering yield." (4) Almost every plant that is grown for the economy has some sort of water stress and with that, farmers are now relying on genetically modifying there crops to sustain a suitable yield and quality. |
Who is using it?
|
 Picture provided by library.thinkquest.com | Where do they occur? According to library.thinkquest.com, droughts happen all around the equator, and in hot
and dry places like: India,
Iran,
US,
West Africa, South Africa, Brazil, and Australia. Some areas are always
dry,
but others go through moments of unusual dryness, which is difficult to
predict
with anticipation. Click here to find out Current water conditions in California. |
Why this is important The drought tolerance gene is important because it lowers the amount of water that farmers need for their crops. The less water they need for crops equals the less amount of money they spend to care for their crops which means less amount of money that consumers pay. Only 1% of Earth's water is made available for us to use and with this information, farmers need to use as little water as they can and the drought tolerance gene is the key to that. |  Picture of drought tolerant corn provided by pubs.acs.org |
