Plants in This Desert Could Help Humanity Survive Droughts
In a massive 10-yearstudy published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a group of scientists examined the genomes of dominant plant species and important soil microbes from the Atacama, and identified 265 genes that play a heavy role in adapting these plants to the harsh desert conditions. The authors describe these findings as a “genetic goldmine” that could help scientists breed more resilient crops able to withstand the drier climates expected to arise during climate change-induced droughts.
The need to engineer new crops has never been more crucial. Droughts around the world are more frequent and more devastating with each passing year. From 2010–2018, about $116.7 billion in crops and livestock in the developing world was lost due to droughts.
“The Atacama desert is like a perfect natural laboratory to study what an arid world would look like,” Rodrigo Gutierrez, a Chilean researcher and a coauthor of the new study, told The Daily Beast. “This is an ecosystem-level study. We basically characterized all the plant species that live here, and nailed the most important ones and what we can learn from them.”