Can crops be bred to need less water?

Question

Can this help in the effort to use water resources more sustainibly and expand where agriculture can exist? Is this much more important then pest resistence or the lessening of the fertalizer needed for people who develop new plant strains? Especially given our ever increasing food needs as a civilization. This could help make ending hunger in the world closer to possible in spite of all the things that make it less possible.

Answer 1

Yes that kind of breed has been developed............

The results, which will revolutionize farming in dry parts of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America, have produced plants on which animals can graze, and which then regrow for human harvest; a pigeonpea that sprouts to maturity in 110 days instead of 180; and sheep that thrive on crop residues -- stalks and roots left over after harvest.

An estimated 1.6 billion people currently live in developing countries and regions affected by insufficient rainfall. Approximately half of the workforce earns its living in and from agriculture.

"Given the prevailing water shortages, the usually hot and harsh climates, and soils degraded by erosion, deforestation and desertification, it is not surprising that the rural people in these countries constitute the poorest of the world's poor, many living on less than a dollar a day," says Ismail Serageldin, Chairman of CGIAR and World Bank Vice President for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development.

Lentil -- ICARDA has developed drought-tolerant varieties of this important pulse crop which has its origin in western Asia. The new strains have been widely adopted by farmers in Jordan, Libya and Syria because they give economic returns even in dry years. Genetic material from the Middle East and Argentina has been used by ICARDA and ICRISAT to improve south Asian lines, and a number of new varieties have been released to farmers in Bangladesh, Nepal, India and Pakistan.

Faba Bean -- Often called the poor man's meat, faba bean is important in China, the Middle East, Ethiopia, Eritrea and parts of South America. The new high-yielding varieties and better production practices have helped Egypt achieve self-sufficiency and strongly increased output in Sudan, Ethiopia and other countries.

Answer 2

Vegetative reproduction

Selecting the strongest, survival of the fittest

Answer 3

Using water appropriately is the best solution, developing plants to better utilize limited resources can only go so far. The quality of a product is so hinged on proper requirements of water, and of soil solution in the right concentration, that when a Lima bean is 90% water it is because that is a Lima bean. Plants live on a soil solution, not the soil. It adjusts itself to the environment. The same Lima that has less water, makes a smaller bean. Look at a tomato plant root from the soil and the same variety from a hydroponic solution. The soil has less fine branching but more cilia to absorb. In the hydro set up it has a lot of fine branching with very limited cilia because it does not need cilia.

     You can design varieties to use a bit less water to give you a quality crop, but the money might be better spent in irrigation technology or water retention materials. Also, crops that are rarely used as staples that use less water could be encouraged with good marketing.

Answer 4

i have no frickin idea but that's a good a** question.

Answer 5

genetic engineering and grafting has resulted in drought resistant crops.