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The Raelian Movement
for those who are not afraid of the future : http://www.rael.org
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Drought-resistant corn might have diminished potential crop losses by one-quarter this year
Paul J. Richards / AFP - Getty Images file
The stifling drought in the U.S. farm belt has cut likely corn production to the lowest level in six years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported in August, but a drought-resistant corn may have improved its odds.
By Richard Mertens Correspondent
Christian Science Monitor
updated 2 hours 23 minutes ago
CHICAGO — This past spring, Carl Sousek, a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer in Prague, Neb., seemed headed toward a record year. Then the rains stopped.
Mr. Sousek now figures he lost half or more of his crop to the drought that scorched the midsection of the country. But he knows this, too: Things could have been much worse.
“You might say I’m pleasantly surprised with the yields,” says Sousek, who was harvesting his corn last week. “Considering what it went though this summer, the extreme heat and lack of rain, it still amazes me that it was able to produce as much as it has.”
Sousek isn’t the only one. Across the Corn Belt, farmers have expressed surprise that their corn endured drought as well as it did – much better, they say, than the varieties they planted just a decade or two ago. In Illinois, for example, one estimate suggests that corn farmers will lose one-quarter less of their crop than they did during the 1988 drought – in large part because of the seeds they planted.
Farmers are benefiting from decades of research in plant breeding combined with a growing interest in crops that can better tolerate drought and other stress. Indeed, research has shown that vulnerability to drought is one of the chief limits to crop production around the world. Meanwhile, gene mapping and other innovations have enabled scientists to develop new varieties with much greater speed and precision than before.
The results are startling and have implications far beyond the the survival of one year’s harvest in the Midwest. In a world of rising temperatures and population, improvements in drought tolerance are especially urgent.
“We’re heading for 9 billion people in the future,” says Mitch Tuinstra, a researcher at Purdue University in West Lafayette,Ind., who has worked on drought tolerance in corn and sorghum. “If climate change is important, and we have to double the amount of grains we produce, we have to think about how we’re going to adopt to conditions like those we had in the United States this year.”
The improvements are not a cure, say experts. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that farmers this year will harvest 13 percent less corn than last year, despite planting 4 percent more acres.
“Drought can wreak a lot of havoc on crops, even today,” says Emerson Nafziger, a crop specialist at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign.
But the research of the past few decades has yielded plants that are much better at withstanding the conditions that withered crops this year – and that this resilience helped limit farmers’ losses. According to his early projections, Illinois corn farmers will probably lose about 33 percent of their crop this year, compared with 44 percent during the 1988 drought.
“If we had the hybrids we had in ’88, we’d be looking at lower yields,” says Nafziger.
Other farmers agree with Nafziger and Sousek.
“Our yields didn’t dip nearly as much,” says Leon Corzine, who farms in Assumption, Ill., and recalls how 1988 devastated his crop.
Bruce Rohwer, a farmer in Paulina, Iowa, marvelled at how his corn stayed green this year while lawns turned brown – then perked up quickly after August rains. “The plant is absolutely phenomenal, what it can do,” he says.
Several years ago, researchers at Dupont Pioneer, the world’s third-largest seed company, planted modern corn hybrids next to top corn varieties from the past 80 years and exposed the plants to dry conditions. They found that today’s corn is three times more drought tolerant than varieties from the 1930s – and that much of the improvement was in varieties from the past 20 years.
“When you see it in the fields, it’s quite dramatic,“ says Jeff Schussler, senior research manager for Maize Stress at Dupont Pioneer.
Researchers around the world are working to increase the drought tolerance of many crops, including rice, wheat and sorghum. But corn, the world’s most abundant grain and an immensely profitable crop, has been the focus of research in theUnited States. Commercial seed companies began marketing drought-tolerant hybrids several years ago, and next year Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, plans to begin selling genetically modified seed that it says confers even greater drought tolerance.
Farmers are following these developments closely. DuPont Pioneer says farmers planted its drought-resistant AQUAmax seed on 2.5 million acres this year and it expects them to plant even more next year.
“There’s a huge interest in anything that’s going to get you a crop when you have a situation like this,” says Greg Kruger, an agronomist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Scientists say modern crops are better at tolerating drought because of improvements like more efficient roots and greater resistance to insects. Farmers also deserve credit for adopting practices like “conservation tillage,” which preserve soil moisture and make it easier for plants to send their roots deep.
Tuinstra of Purdue says his own research, which involves cross-breeding plants from a wide range of the world’s 20,000 corn varieties, has shown promise. But making plants more drought tolerant is far from easy. The biggest challenge, scientists say, is to produce crops versatile enough to do well when the rains fail, but also when they don’t.
Moreover, “it’s going to be hard” to match past gains, says Schussler of Dupont Pioneer. “We have made major improvements already, optimizing parts of the plant.”
For his part, Corzine of Assumption worries that farmers will expect too much. “There’s no miracle cure for extreme weather,” he says. Still, he’s considering planting “a few bags” of the newest drought-tolerant varieties next year. “I might try a little bit of that and see how it does.”
WARNING FROM RAEL: For those who don't use their intelligence at its
full capacity, the label "selected by RAEL" on some articles does not
mean that I agree with their content or support it. "Selected by RAEL"
means that I believe it is important for the people of this planet to
know about what people think or do, even when what they think or do is
completely stupid and against our philosophy. When I selected articles
in the past about stupid Christian fundamentalists in America praying
for rain, I am sure no Rael-Science reader was stupid enough to believe
that I was supporting praying to change the weather. So, when I select
articles which are in favor of drugs, anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish, racist,
revisionist, or inciting hatred against any group or religion, or any
other stupid article, it does not mean that I support them. It just
means that it is important for all human beings to know about them.
Common sense, which is usually very good among our readers, is good
enough to understand that. When, like in the recent articles on drug
decriminalization, it is necessary to make it clearer, I add a comment,
which in this case was very clear: I support decriminalizing all drugs,
as it is stupid to throw depressed and sad people (as only depressed and
sad people use drugs) in prison and ruin their life with a criminal
record. That does not mean that there is any change to the Message which
says clearly that we must not use any drug except for medical purposes.
The same applies to the freedom of expression which must be absolute.
That does not mean again of course that I agree with anti-Jews,
anti-Semites, racists of any kind or anti-Raelians. But by knowing your
enemies or the enemies of your values, you are better equipped to fight
them. With love and respect of course, and with the wonderful sentence
of the French philosopher Voltaire in mind: "I disapprove of what you
say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
--
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"Ethics" is simply a last-gasp attempt by deist conservatives and
orthodox dogmatics to keep humanity in ignorance and obscurantism,
through the well tried fermentation of fear, the fear of science and
new technologies.
There is nothing glorious about what our ancestors call history,
it is simply a succession of mistakes, intolerances and violations.
On the contrary, let us embrace Science and the new technologies
unfettered, for it is these which will liberate mankind from the
myth of god, and free us from our age old fears, from disease,
death and the sweat of labour.
Rael
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