A Miraculous Plant to Solve World Climate Issue.
'Resurrection plants' as Hope for Climate Change.
- By --
- Wednesday, 29 Nov, 2023
In an effort to adapt to climate change, Jill Farrant, a South African scientist is leading global research into developing crops that mimic the extraordinary survival skills of "resurrection plants".
A resurrection plant, also called Rose of Jericho, can survive several years without water by drying up and going dormant. The plant appears dead, but provide water, and within a couple of hours it will begin to revive and turn green. Within a day or so, it will be fully unfurled, and "resurrected" into a green, fern-like plant.
Professor Jill Farrant hopes that unlocking the genetic codes of drought-tolerant plants could help farmers toiling in increasingly hot and dry conditions.
"I want to cater to the subsistence farmer, the person who wants to make enough food to live," Farrant, 55, said.
"Farmers are becoming more and more dispirited, and droughts are killing them."
Environmentalists fear that more and more of Africa will be reduced to a dust bowl by global warming, with higher temperatures, reduced water supplies and population growth threatening to trigger worsening famines.
Climate change could reduce maize yields across southern Africa by as much as 30 percent by 2030, according to the UN Environment Programme.
Scientists believe it is also important to adapt to the new reality.
Reported by: Maryam Abdul-Aziz Usman.
Reference: PHYS.ORG and The Daily Beast.