[outcast]

Are coming.....

An international team of scientists has developed salt-tolerant plants using a new type of genetic modification (GM), bringing salt-tolerant cereal crops a step closer to reality.

The research team - based at the University of Adelaide's Waite Campus in Australia - has used a new GM technique to contain salt in parts of the plant where it does less damage.

Salinity affects agriculture worldwide, which means the results of this research could impact on world food production and security.

The work has been led by researchers from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the University of Adelaide's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, in collaboration with scientists from the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge, UK.

The results of their work are published today in the top international plant science journal, 'The Plant Cell'.

[Quinny]

Nominate for the most significant cornucopian technology post.

[outcast]

Yep, lets all totally discount something without thinking about the implications....................

[Tanada]

I think this is one of those things that cycles through, I remember reading a decade ago about GM modified tomato plants that were twice as salt tolerant as the normal varieties, and about formers in the SW growing crops that accumulated salt in their structures as a rotation crop to reduce the salt content of their irrigated soils.

[rangerone314]

If salt is a problem, grow asparagus, nature genetically engineered that to be salt-resistant.

[outcast]

I dont want to eat just asperagus for the rest of my life

[Quinny]

Don't be so paranoid, I meant it in a positive way and I wasn't dismissing it.

We get so much insignificant bullshit that IMO will make absolutely SFA difference to the plight of humanity, this however could IMO be very significant.

Yep, lets all totally discount something without thinking about the implications....................

[Pretorian]

so, now even more babies with bloated bellies will live to adulthood and spawn even more babies with bloated bellies? Great.

[outcast]

The reason for the "bloated bellies" is because being able to have as much food as you want is new in the human experience. We evolved under major famines, so that is what we deal with comparitively better.

[Ludi]

The reason for the "bloated bellies" is because being able to have as much food as you want is new in the human experience. We evolved under major famines, so that is what we deal with comparitively better.

Not really. Non-civilized peoples generally didn't/don't experience famine. There are lean times, but not much famine.

http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/2005/1 ... index.html

http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/2005/1 ... index.html

http://tobyspeople.com/anthropik/2006/0 ... index.html

[outcast]

Um, no

With an extensive database on nutrition and food availability in preindustrial societies, which was compiled in the 1950s, Benyshek and Watson compared twenty-eight hunter-gatherer societies with sixty-six agriculturalist societies. They detected no link between lifestyle and amount of available food, or between lifestyle and frequency or duration of food shortages. Feast-or-famine cycles were probably common throughout human prehistory, and they may indeed favor thrifty genotypes, the anthropologists say.But the cycles seem to have been equally likely among foraging and farming economies. (American Journal of Physical Anthropology 131:120-6, 2006)

[vaseline2008]

Re: Salt tolerant crops

Isn't that called "seaweed" or kelp?

[outcast]

It was referring to land based plants.

[JJ]

Re: Salt tolerant crops

Isn't that called "seaweed" or kelp?

I love seaweed. Bing serves it with vinegar. Can you eat kelp?

[careinke]

Yes you can eat Kelp. Asparagus grows well in salty soil, we have it growing wild on our sand spit.

[JJ]

Yes you can eat Kelp. Asparagus grows well in salty soil, we have it growing wild on our sand spit.

yes, we've had a large plot of asparagus for about 12 years.