International effort to tackle salinity problem

Soil Science

More salt-tolerant cereal crops could be a reality in Australia within a few years, helping to ease the nation's $270 million salinity problem, according to researchers from the University of Adelaide.

Thanks to a Federal Government grant, the University's researchers from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG) will collaborate with their French counterparts over the next two years to work on developing more salt-tolerant crops.

Research Fellow Dr Alex Johnson said the project would help Australia address one of the country's most serious environmental problems - increasing levels of salinity - which currently affects 5.7 million hectares of Australian soil.

"Salinity is a growing problem in Australia, caused mainly by agricultural practices such as land clearing and irrigation," Dr Johnson said.

"We are becoming more intensive in our agricultural practices which has led to a high reliance on irrigation systems, often on land cleared of trees. If you keep pumping water into an area it can bring groundwater to the surface, which increases the salt concentration in our soils.

"By 2050 it's projected that 17.1 million hectares of land will be affected by dryland salinity - 80% of that agricultural."

The grant, made possible through the Federal Government's French-Australian Science and Technology Program, will allow researchers from both countries to work collaboratively on salt-tolerant crops.

Because the rice genome is the model for DNA studies in cereals, it was chosen as the crop for the research.

A library of genes will be engineered into rice lines in Australia and expressed in particular areas of the plant, to be grown in France. The plants will then be shipped back to Australia for analysis.

"Rather than changing the entire plant, we will modify just parts of it to make the plant more salt-tolerant. This will involve changing the characteristics of certain cells to either pump salt out, or take it in and hold on to it," Dr Johnson said.

"At the end of two years we hope to be able to modify parts of the rice plant to ensure that it is salt-tolerant and then transfer that knowledge to wheat and barley, Australia's major cereal crops."

Dr Johnson said many major crops, including wheat and rice, had a low tolerance to salt.

Australian researchers will work at the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) in Montpellier, and French researchers will spend time at the ACPFG.

French researcher Dr Emmanuel Guiderdoni from CIRAD will arrive in Adelaide in August, while ACPFG researchers Dr Johnson, Dr Olivier Cotsaftis and Professor Mark Tester will head to Montpellier later this year.

The grant also provides for French and Australian PhD students to exchange research institutions for up to six months.

Story by Candy Gibson