The Express

GM Short Cut To Help Starving Third World

British scientists have claimed that a breakthrough in plant genetics could help tackle Third-World hunger.

They say the new shorter plants that result are better able to withstand storms and could be crucial in increasing local food production.

The technique - which inserts one plant gene into another plant - is different to that used for many GM crops currently on the market. Many of those have been given new properties - like resistance to pesticide or insects - through the insertion of genes from species, such as bacteria, with which they could not breed in nature.

However, critics of the GM revolution warned that the new, shorter, crops still posed a threat because no one can be sure of the long-term consequences.

The latest breakthrough was achieved at the John Innes Centre in Norwich, which has isolated the key gene in wheat and believes it could be used in maize and rice.

"We know that dwarf rice and wheat plants, produced by conventional breeding, are higher yielding than taller varieties," said Dr Nick Harberd.

"Isolating a single gene that controls plant height means that we can now convert any locally adapted, low-yielding variety into a dwarf form and potentially increase its yield." His team told Nature magazine that the breakthrough could be used in virtually any crop plant.