Bayer: Science For A Better Life - research

Genetic engineering improves crop yields

Braving the drought

Plant researcher: Marc De Block examines stresstolerant rice plants.

Conditions are highly unfavorable for farming in many heavily populated areas of the world. Farmers in Asia, Africa and Latin America often lose much of their crop to low rainfall, storms, severe heat or saline soil. Bayer CropScience has now devised technology to help plants fight many of these "stress factors" and thus withstand drought or flood more successfully.

Finding solutions to global food problems

A clever trick of genetic engineering is helping to boost crop productivity. When plants are exposed to stress they consume more energy, increase their breathing rate and so start their repair mechanisms working. But if stress goes on for too long, the cells' engine burns out and the whole plant, or important parts of it, dies. Special enzymes are responsible for this self-destructive process. Bayer scientists have managed to switch off this mechanism by inserting short segments of DNA into the plants' genetic material, an effect which experts call silencing. Initial tests have been positive. Read the article (PDF file) below for more information about how the global food problem might be solved.