New crops New crops

1989/03/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Bioteknologia
• Nekazaritza

Thanks to the devices that will provide genetic engineering, they can give new characteristics to the plants. In a meeting of technicians working in genetic engineering companies, it has been said that within three years these techniques will be present at the fair.

Genetic engineers succeeded in the early 1980s to genetically transform the tobacco plant and have recently done the same with cotton, tomatoes and many other broadleaf plants.

However, with narrow leaf plants they have not had this success. Among the narrow leaf plants are the most important crops in the world such as rice, corn and wheat. The existing obstacles so far are disappearing.

Different ways to modify the genetic information of maize are being tested and the problem is expected to have been solved in less than two years. Rice does not pose serious problems, but changing wheat will be much more difficult. In the latter case, the problem is not to introduce the new DNA into cell culture, but to convert these cells into complete plants.