Mexico successfully breeds drought-tolerant corn varieties

Scientists from the Mexican National Institute of Advanced Research (CINVESTAV) have recently bred and successfully tested new varieties of maize, which are 20% more drought tolerant than their current counterparts.

This success brings hope to contribute to solving food problems in arid regions which now account for more than 50% of the land area.

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According to Professor Beatriz Xoconostle, head of the project, Mexico is the first country in the world to achieve this impressive result, because so many countries have only successfully bred in the laboratory, not yet planted in natural conditions.

It is worth mentioning here that the new maize hybrid is not genetically modified and can grow in hot weather conditions above 40 degrees Celsius, which is very suitable for the natural conditions of the northwestern states of Mexico.

Professor Beatriz Xoconostle said the discovery of the drought tolerance of the corn is based on a mechanism and feature of a sugar called trehalosa that allows water to retain in stem cells .

Through research, scientists have found that in nature, there are trehalasa enzymes that break down trehalosa and thus reduce drought tolerance of corn.

On this basis, the research team carried out a map of corn germs of a bacterium, the scientific name is tumefaciens existing on the soil floor of Mexican territory, which neutralizes the activity of trehalasa yeast. , and thus conserving trehalosa sugar, means increasing the drought tolerance of corn.

Under the plan, the new corn variety will be mass-intensive in barren northwestern states. In the future, based on this technology, CINVESTAV will conduct experiments with some other food crops in Mexico.

Corn is a kind of food that has been present in Mexican meals for generations.

However, this country still has to import from the US so far, on the one hand because the dry land is difficult for maize to grow and the area is still small, on the other hand the productivity is still modest at 2.5 tons / ha, much lower than 9 tons / ha in the neighboring US.