QS2
Shepherd
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Registered: 03-2006
Posts: 1027
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Genetic engineered rice
I was reading some science news recently and saw this astonishingly ambitious project to reengineer rice in to a completely different plant type.
The basic idea is to convert the type from something called a C3 to a C4 type plant. The difference between the two can be basically summarised in that C4 plants have an extra step in their photosynthesis systems, where they will concentrate CO2 close to the location where they do photosynthesis, thus making it far easier to get the carbon from the air.
The drawback of this is ofcourse that some extra energy needs to be expended for this. But this is more then made up by increased efficiency in photosynthesis it seems. Also due to this mechanism water losses from plants can be severely curtailed, to understand how big the difference is, most desert plants are C4 plants because C3 simply have no chance in such an arid environment. Thus it could be possible to save perhaps half the water or more if the figures can be believed, for the exact same food production. Basically, this would be a staggering breakthrough for Asian countries and greatly alleviate their water problems. (This is due to agriculture using the overwhelming majority of all sweet water usage)
So I hope the people attempting this really the greatest of luck, it would be a staggering achievement and have an immense effect on reducing human impact on the environment, not to mention it could save countries from considerable harm that are projected to get less rainfall as the globe heats up further.
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7/12/2009, 10:04 pm
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Firlefanz
Lady of the Land
Hero (premium)
Registered: 05-2003
Location: Germany
Posts: 2514
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Re: Genetic engineered rice
It's rather interesting because those C4 plants are mostly grasses (I think one of the most known is something called China Grass, or so). Until now, the C4 grasses have been suggested as crops for biofuels, as they grow so much plant materian in a short time.
Now, rise is also a grass, or at least closely related. I can see how scientists hope to make the switch.
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7/13/2009, 6:56 am
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