Abiotic Stress
Resistance
Abiotic or environmental stresses, including
drought, cold, salinity, and metals in the soil, cause tremendous crop
losses worldwide, even in developed countries. For farmers whose
crop yields are threatened by these environmental factors, the
development of stress-tolerant crops has significant implications:
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Of the world's 130 million hectares of land cultivated by rice farmers,
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30% contain enough salt to stunt rice yields or prevent cultivation
altogether
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20% are periodically subject to drought conditions
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10% occasionally experience temperatures too low (15°C
or below) for healthy plant development (Lane, 2002).
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Strongly acidic soils, which often contain
high levels of aluminum, are common in the humid tropics. There
has been little agricultural development in the Brazilian cerrado, a
savanna region of approximately 200 million hectares, because its highly
leached soils contain large amounts of aluminum compounds (Plucknett and
Smith,
1982).
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The Canadian prairies, which are among the
coldest agricultural regions in the world, contain 85% of Canada's
arable land. Canadian farmers lose millions of dollars each year
in production and market quality due to frost damage (Functional
Genomics, 2004).
A Nigerian rice farmer cuts rice on his land.
Without extensive irrigation, his crops would produce one-tenth of their
current output. Photo by Robert Grossman. *Permission
pending from the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD, 2004)*
Although no stress-tolerant crop varieties have
yet been released commercially, research is ongoing to confer
tolerance of several abiotic stresses to crop plants. Learn more
about researchers' methods of conferring resistance to the following
abiotic stresses:
Metals in the Soil
Drought and Salinity
Cold
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