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January 14, 2011

Drought-Tolerant Maize Gets U.S. Debut

When the planting season arrives later this year, farmers in the United States will have a new way to safeguard their crops from drought. Last week, DuPont subsidiary Pioneer Hi-Bred International, headquartered in Johnston, Iowa, announced plans to release a series of hybrid maize (corn) strains that can flourish with less water. The seeds will compete with another maize strain unveiled last July by Swiss agribusiness Syngenta. Both companies used conventional breeding rather than genetic engineering to produce their seeds.

Pioneer says that field studies show its new hybrids will increase maize yields by five percent in water-limited environments, such as the western states of the intensively agricultural Corn Belt region. That compares with the 15 percent yield gain promised by Syngenta for its maize. Both companies, as well as seed firm Monsanto, based in St Louis, Missouri, are also working on transgenic maize varieties, hoping to tap into a multibillion-dollar market (see Nature 466, 548-551; 2010).

In theory, drought-tolerant varieties could fill the gap left in maize supplies in recent years as stocks have been diverted for ethanol production. But not everybody is convinced that these crops will make a big difference. "It's good news, but it's not great news," says David Zilberman, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Berkeley. No crop will survive a severe drought, he says, and other factors such as nutrient availability and soil quality are at play during water shortages, which tend to be more frequent but less severe than droughts. "It will be useful for a small number of really important areas," Zilberman says, "but my feeling is that people expect altogether too much from drought tolerance." Read more...

This blog is written by Martin Little The Global Miller, published and supported by the GFMT Magazine from Perendale Publishers.





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