Tiny plants could cut costs, shrink environmental footprint

Brian Wallheimer in Seed Daily via SPX: Tall, waving corn fields that line Midwestern roads may one day be replaced by dwarfed versions that require less water, fertilizer and other inputs, thanks to a fungicide commonly used on golf courses.

Burkhard Schulz, a Purdue University assistant professor of plant biochemical and molecular genetics, had earlier found that knocking out the steroid function in corn plants would create tiny versions that only had female sex characteristics. But brassinazole, the chemical used to inhibit the plant steroid biosynthesis, was prohibitively expensive.

One gram of brassinazole could cost as much as $25,000, so Schulz started looking into other options. He found that propiconazole, used to treat fungal dollar spot disease on golf courses, is more potent and costs about 10 cents for the same amount.

"Any research where you needed to treat large plants for long periods of time would have been impossible," Schulz said. "Those tests before would have cost us millions of dollars. Now, they cost us $25. This will open up research in crops that was not possible before."....

A cornfield in South Dakota, shot by Lars Plougmann, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license