The Scientist Gardener: Monsanto's GM Drought Tolerant Corn

DroughtGardTM maize will be the first commercially available transgenic (GM) drought tolerant crop if it's released in 2013 as planned. Hybrid seed sold under this trademark will combine a novel transgenic trait (based on the bacterial cspB gene) with the best of Monsanto's conventional breeding program.

The Union of Concerned Scientists threw their usual wet blanket on the development. I think their gloomy assessment of transgenic drought tolerance is pretty biased but they do make a few good points that the public should understand. Primarily, "drought tolerance" does not mean that these plants can be grown with little to no water.

A typical maize crop burns through over half a million gallons of water on the way to harvest - and the physics of turning sunshine, minerals and water into over a hundred bushels per acre of grain doesn't leave much room for improvement. To paraphrase a scientific presentation I once saw, modern maize varieties are like high performance racecars. You could re-engineer your racecar to get 50 mpg, but it won't be very fast anymore and you won't make any money. All the same, getting more grain per input water (generally referred to aswater use efficiency) remains of major interest...

Continues @ The Scientist Gardener: Monsanto's GM Drought Tolerant Corn: