Manipulating RNA allows plants to yield dramatically more crops and increases drought tolerance, researchers report.

In initial tests, adding a gene encoding for a protein called FTO to both rice and potato plants increased their yield by 50% in field tests.

The plants grew significantly larger, produced longer root systems, and were better able to tolerate drought stress. Analysis also showed that the plants had increased their rate of photosynthesis.

“The change really is dramatic,” says Chuan He, professor of chemistry, biochemistry, and molecular biology at the University of Chicago, who led the research with Guifang Jia, a professor at Peking University. “What’s more, it worked with almost every type of plant we tried it with so far, and it’s a very simple modification to make.”

The researchers—along with other leading experts—are hopeful about the potential of this breakthrough, especially in the face of climate change and other pressures on crop systems worldwide.

“This really provides the possibility of engineering plants to potentially improve the ecosystem as global warming proceeds,” He says. “We rely on plants for many, many things—everything from wood, food, and medicine, to flowers and oil—and this potentially offers a way to increase the stock material we can get from most plants.”

“This is a very exciting technology and could potentially help address problems of poverty and food insecurity at a global scale—and could also potentially be useful in responding to climate change,” says Michael Kremer, a professor in economics and the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and recipient of a Nobel Prize for his work on alleviating global poverty.

For decades, scientists have worked to boost crop production in the face of an increasingly unstable climate and a growing global population. But such processes are usually complicated, and often result only in incremental changes. The way this discovery came about was quite different.

Read the full article about manipulating crop RNA by Louise Lerner at Futurity.