Or any other desert area for that matter? Question says it all. I always sort of wondered that ever since they started this genetic engineering with plants all those years ago.
2006-11-03 13:58:19 · 9 answers · asked by Part Time Cynic 7 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Botany
There are many plants that can grow in deserts, but if you are talking about non - desert species, this is more difficult.
Drought resistance (the ability to grow in deserts for example) is described as a complex trait. This means that it is affected by many genes. Genetic modification usually focuses on one area of the genome (in simple terms, one gene), so making a GM plant that's drought resistant would involve not just changing one piece of DNA, but changing heaps of it. For example, to make a wheat plant as drought resistant as a cactus would involve changing so much of its DNA it would be fundamentally changed so much that it would probably be no longer identifiable as wheat!
There is a huge amount of global research about improving drought resistance in crops, but even if we could do this using genetic engineering, we are a really really long way from making it happen; if it could be done I'm sure you can imagine the consequences - the 23,000 people who die from starvation every day would still be alive, climate change would (arguably) be less of an issue, world economics would be dramatically changed - I'm sure you could think of more; although I guess the question would then have to be, if we could make even more of a global food surplus, would it be any more likely to reach the people who need it?
2006-11-07 04:42:02 · answer #1 · answered by Cathy :) 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yup. You could even get away with planting it with natural plants and permanently covering it with vegetation if you looked after the plants and watered them to start with. Under the right conditions you can increase the rainfall over a desert by planting it. What you need is an aquifer close enough to the surface for the roots to suck up the water and pass it into the atmosphere by transpiration. You can turn a forest into desert too, by uncontrolled logging. There are hundreds of cubic kilometres of water deep below the Sahara which fell as rain during the last ice age. The Sahara has changed from being only semi-arid into a desert partly because the Earth's weather patterns have changed over the last 12000 years but also because of man's activities. Back about when the pyramids were being built, Southern Egypt and Ethiopia had quite productive agriculture.
2006-11-03 14:10:55 · answer #2 · answered by zee_prime 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
This may surprise you but a desert has it's own vegetation; just add few days of rain and the desert will bloom.
The desert sometimes have rainfall and you have these beautiful out of this world flowers. these plants are specially adapted to desert life. If there's no rain the seeds simply hibernate. there are some plants that actually dry up as well but come back to life as soon as ther's rainfall.
There's inherent danger in introducing genetically altered plant species into the desert because the ecological balance of the planet will be in jeopardy.
2006-11-04 06:47:10 · answer #3 · answered by olayinka o 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
A part of this question that isn't getting answered is the part about "genetically altered" seed (or plants). I think it deserves to be said that altered plants are generally for crop use, and so they usually only work (grow) where they can be cared for by agriculture or horticulture. Wild plants grow best in the wild, and have a much more extensive adaptive honing in their background than a plant would have with a short-term and idiosyncratic human "honing" of its characteristics. BUT, wild plants CAN be planted in new places, and encouraged to grow there with a little watering. And maybe even some altered crop plants could be encouraged to grow in desert with the intention to stabilize dry sandy dunes into good ground for growing plants. Soil might even develop! That helps all plants.
2006-11-04 07:55:36 · answer #4 · answered by ghart27 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
In many deserts there already grow plants beautifully adapted. I know I live in the high desert.
The biggest problem of growing anything in the desert is water. Changing that would be too much like playing God and the repercussions could be very scary!
2006-11-03 14:08:01 · answer #5 · answered by purple 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
in case you opt to circulate severe sci-fi, or possibly one hundred years into the destiny, it is the way it would artwork. Alteration of a undeniable species of fruiting plant's genome, we could say the apple tree, so as that incredibly of fruiting apples, gummy bears are formed. with the intention to try this you may possibly ought to hit upon and hit upon interior the apple tree's genome the particular loci which encode for the dimensions, shape, and chemical factors mandatory to create the apples. you will possibly then regulate those loci, by capacity of way of plasmid insertion, into products of genetic information which encode for the form, length, and factors of gummy bears. the better area approximately this plan is that--presented the wood are no longer sterile--you should plant the seeds modern in a freshly picked massive gummy undergo and advance a crop of gummy undergo wood.
2016-10-21 05:43:12 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
there are already many plants that have adapted to the desert better than any we could design!!
because the desert has little water and nutrients, it would be to expensive and not economical to farm, no matter what you plant
2006-11-03 14:04:53 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
Yes.With careful cultivation and self-supporting irrigation systems,the deserts of the world could be made to bloom.
2006-11-03 14:08:16 · answer #8 · answered by S.A.M. Gunner 7212 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Yeah, in Afghanistan its called the Poppy Seed....
But if their was a way, then now with todays expansive technology should have an answer...
2006-11-03 14:06:55 · answer #9 · answered by JOHNNY D 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋