{"id":752902,"date":"2026-04-25T20:32:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T20:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/752902\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T20:32:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T20:32:20","slug":"a-first-step-to-drought-tolerant-crops-salk-institute-charts-a-course","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/752902\/","title":{"rendered":"A first step to drought tolerant crops \u2013 Salk Institute charts a course"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Fresh strawberries on display at the Heritage Family Farms booth at the Little Italy Farmers\u2019 Market on April 11, 2026. (File photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

Drought cuts down harvests every year, but new local research may allow farmers to maximize their output even as water becomes more scarce.<\/p>\n

A team at the Salk Institute<\/a> investigating plant aging has charted a new path to drought-tolerant crops. While the broader scientific community is packed with research on human aging, they have found plants approach the process very differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlants are able to accelerate their aging when undergoing environmental stress. If you and I don\u2019t get enough water, not enough food, we\u2019ll just die \u2013 we don\u2019t have internal flexibility. Plants can say, \u2018I don\u2019t have enough resources. I\u2019m going to speed up my aging process,\u2019\u201d said Joseph Swift, PhD, the first author of the Nature Plants<\/a> study.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Joseph Ecker (left) and Joseph Swift (right) debuted a high-resolution atlas that shows how droughts affect plant cells. (Photo courtesy of Salk Institute)<\/p>\n

While the average person might scoff at choosing to age faster, plants see things differently. Aging faster actually helps them stay alive.<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine you\u2019re a plant, growing super happy and you have enough water. You\u2019ve developed all these leaves and have grown to a certain level that you match how many resources you have. If you run out of water, you need a way to shrink your size really quickly,\u201d said Swift. \u201cThey do that by throwing off leaves, so the older leaves start dying.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stress avoidance causes leaves to shrink in size and eventually wither away. Even if a plant looks perfectly healthy, it can still be dealing with stress. It was not known how exactly plants do this. Swift and his senior colleague, Joseph Ecker, PhD, sought to uncover this \u201cmagical property of plants.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>A 37-day-old\u00a0Arabidopsis thaliana\u00a0grown under well-watered conditions (left) or subject to nine days of drought (right). (Photo courtesy of Salk Institute)<\/p>\n

The pair turned to Arabidopsis thaliana, a fast-growing weed that botanists worldwide use as a model organism \u2013 it works like mice in human studies. The plant\u2019s genetic code relates to a wide range of crops, including corn, wheat and rice.<\/p>\n

They found a specific gene, FRO6, is turned off during drought conditions. Since it had the clearest connection to limiting leaf sizes, Swift and Ecker elected to genetically engineer the plant so this switch would always stay on.<\/p>\n

By removing the ability to regulate growth, scientists can develop crops that perform at their best even under stress. Farmers often don\u2019t know until the harvest if invisible drought stress is making their fields less productive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If this kind of genetic edit is applied to crops, it would be the first proactive measure against these unseen stressors. Until then, farmers still will be\u00a0stuck reacting after the damage has been done, surveying fields with tools<\/a> like leaf scanners, satellite imagery and drones.<\/p>\n

This does not mean fields will be full of freshly genetically modified crops \u2013 that will take time. The Salk Institute hopes its observational research lays the groundwork for future discoveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked at drought in a way folks haven\u2019t before,\u201d said Swift. \u201cIn the face of climate change and limiting water resources, we need to move into a future with better technology to help agriculture be adaptive, both in this country and in other places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Juan Martinez has operated Heritage Family Farms<\/a> since 2008. With a specialty in fruit trees, he offers in-season farm-to-table goods at local farmers\u2019 markets. He limits how much he waters his plants, naturally adapting them to drought conditions and improving their resistance. He believes drought-tolerant crops would work wonders for his business.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Juan Martinez has operated Heritage Family Farms since 2008. He often encourages his customers to try his specialty fruits, especially cherimoya, his favorite. (Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cThey wouldn\u2019t slow down at any point, not even during the transition period from being under watered to when they have enough, like a wet winter,\u201d said Martinez. \u201cThey have to adapt to less watering and essentially learn to survive again with less nourishing conditions. We wouldn\u2019t see any decline in production; it would make me more money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steven Briggs<\/a>\u00a0spent the first half of his career working on agriculture biotechnology. Today, the professor is focused on crop disease resistance and teaching the science of the genome at UC San Diego. In a world with a changing climate and agricultural economy, Briggs sees the promise of a future with drought-resistant crops.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe primary impact will be to increase the income of farmers. Nobody\u2019s going to pay more because this came from a drought-tolerant plant, but farmers will save money. Therefore, they\u2019ll earn more and be willing to pay more for the seed,\u201d said Briggs.<\/p>\n

Water is not an issue in the current market, since farmers have access to affordable water from the Colorado River. But with disputes over the river\u2019s water rights, Briggs foresees an increase in farmers\u2019 costs that could be transferred to the consumer.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Cherimoyas, a specialty good sold by Heritage Family Farms, on display at the Little Italy Farmers\u2019 Market on April 11, 2026. Often called \u201cice cream fruit,\u201d it has a sweet, banana-pineapple flavor. (Photo by Thomas Murphy\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anything is going to cause prices to go down. Even beyond price, there\u2019s only so much water. Agriculture takes about 80% to 90%<\/a> of all of our fresh water across the country. So, as cities and consumers require more fresh water, it has to come from agriculture,\u201d said Briggs.<\/p>\n

Advances in developing drought tolerant crops could help San Diego farmers maintain their current level of production as water becomes more scarce and costs rise.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re dependent on a farmer somewhere, being able to make enough food and to make affordable food. This is something we\u2019ve taken for granted, but we\u2019re entering a period where I think we\u2019ll see a tipping point. Prices will go up dramatically, and in some cases, supplies won\u2019t be adequate,\u201d said Briggs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fresh strawberries on display at the Heritage Family Farms booth at the Little Italy Farmers\u2019 Market on April…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":752903,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,285,81081,1183,309802,309803,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-752902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-america","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-climate-change","tag-crops","tag-research","tag-salk-institute","tag-salk-institute-for-biological-studies","tag-san-diego","tag-sandiego","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116467254236947855","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=752902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}