Scientists find new way to help crops fight pests
(Reuters) – An international team of scientists has managed to transfer disease resistance from one plant family to another, offering broader protection from potentially costly and destructive pests.
A team led by Cyril Zipfel at Britain’s Sainsbury Laboratory found that transferring a single gene from a wild plant to disease-susceptible crop plants made them more robust against infections like bacterial wilt and other diseases.
If the results can be duplicated more widely, they could help prevent massive crop losses and avoid environmental, health and financial costs associated with using pesticides, the researchers wrote in the Nature Biotechnology journal on Sunday.
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