Brassinosteroid-modified crops: key players for a modern Green Revolution.
Ahmar S, Rapacz M, Wattoo FM, Pociecha E
Crop Improvement
Food on your plate — wheat, rice, corn — may soon come from crops engineered to survive droughts, frosts, and pests better than today's varieties, helping ensure grocery shelves stay stocked as climate change intensifies.
Plants naturally produce tiny hormone molecules that control how tall they grow, how efficiently they use sunlight and nutrients, and how well they fight off disease and weather stress. Researchers have found that tweaking the genes responsible for making or responding to these hormones can produce shorter, sturdier crops that yield more grain. The goal is crops that can thrive in tough conditions — like late frosts in Eastern Europe — without needing as much fertilizer or pesticide.
Key Findings
Manipulating brassinosteroid signaling and biosynthesis genes has already produced semi-dwarf crop varieties with improved yield and photosynthetic efficiency.
Brassinosteroid-modified crops show enhanced nitrogen-use efficiency, potentially reducing fertilizer demand.
Existing brassinosteroid-modified varieties still lack sufficient tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, identifying a key gap for future research and breeding efforts.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists are engineering crops using plant hormones called brassinosteroids to create a new generation of high-yielding, climate-resilient varieties — building on the original Green Revolution but designed for the challenges of a hotter, more unstable world.
Abstract Preview
With the global population projected to reach 9.8 billion by 2050, coupled with extreme weather events and resource scarcity, there is an urgent need to redesign existing Green Revolution varieties...
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