Engineering crops for improved freezing tolerance and better yields

Engineering crops for improved freezing tolerance and better yields
Freezing temperatures cause considerable damage to crops and a focus of much research is to identify the genes that confer plant tolerance to freezing conditions. Through a mutant screen, we have identified an Arabidopsis for freezing tolerance gene as one already known to confer drought tolerance. It may ameliorate the effects of ice damage by a similar mechanism, however, the protein is multifunctional and expressed at different subcellular and tissue locations. The purpose of this project is to identify which of the protein's specific locations and enzymatic activities is/are necessary for freezing tolerance. The project also takes a close look at the relationship between abiotic stress tolerance and yield. Increases in stress tolerance are usually offset by losses in yield, however, one of the multiple functions of this protein is to increase plant growth through improving auxin transport. The project aims to discover whether it is possible to increase both yield and freezing tolerance in the same plant with a view to crop improvement.