A Melbourne professor believes genetic technologies is a vital tool for developing crops which can sustain productivity under abiotic stress conditions.
The Head of Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology in the School of Agriculture and Food at the University of Melbourne Professor Prem Bhalla had recently presented a dean's research seminar on developing crops for future climates.
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Prof Bhalla said a rapidly increasing global population and growing food demand will be dictating a large productivity gain to grow more food on one area of arable land.
"We have a challenge ahead of us... population will grow substantially and we will need to produce more food than we have in our entire human history," Prof Bhalla said.
"We have to do this in the same amount of land, so the challenge is quite big but we need to meet that challenge on top of uncertain weather conditions."
During the webinar Prof Bhalla highlighted a recent study on technology being used for macadamia trees in Australia.
"The macadamia tree is an open pollinated crop, so that means when farmers are wanting to propagate that tree to improve quality for the nuts," she said
"But the problem in the industry is that it can't multiply when they identify it as being open pollenated with the progeny being different.
"The industry usually use cuttings to propagate, but they haven't been successful"
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The research teamed up with the macadamia and horticulture industry where they took macadamia tissue and cultured it in a petra dish, which then produced many shoots from that tissue.
"This was a first time report which showed that we can multiply macadamia trees in this way, and did genetic printing to make sure they are the clones of the tree."
Prof Bhalla said studies and experiments in producing hyper allergenic grass through biotechnology was also key in developing crop for future climate conditions and remove allergens.
During the webinar, she also pointed to research where she bred smaller soybean plants with the same yield, raising the possibility that smaller crops could grow more food from less land in a changing climate.
As part of a research team Prof Bhalla investigated the soybean PIF4, a gene that interprets light and temperature signals from its environment, triggering plant growth.
They used genetic tools to make PIF4 more active in the soybean plant, a technique known as over-expression, so that its function would become more obvious.
"An exciting result we are seeing from these plants are they are possibly more heat tolerant, whether they could need less water, less nutrients, and so on," she said.
"More work needs to be on this, but this is a good phenotype to have, converting a late flowering variety into one yield and looking the data 10 days is difference and that is a lot.
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"If the varieties are compact, it is easier to harvest if the yield is the same."
