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Agriculture

UFS scientists teach plants to "wake up"

───   22:47 Tue, 04 Aug 2015

UFS scientists teach plants to "wake up" | News Article

Bloemfontein - Researchers at the University of the Free State (UFS) have been working on a product that will help plants, particularly crops such as maize or wheat, protect themselves against stress factors.

The UFS said in a statement the collaboration between UFS researchers from its department of Soil, Crop and Climate Sciences and the German company Agraforum AG has resulted in a product called ComCat.

The Department’s Dr Elmarie van der Watt says in nature, plants communicate by means of natural chemicals as part of their resistance mechanisms.

These chemicals enable them to protect themselves against stress conditions, including diseases, fungi, wind and droughts. However, monoculture crops have largely lost this ability.

The European researchers extracted these self-protection chemicals from wild plants and made them available to the UFS for research and development.

Van der Watt says the resulting product basically wakes the plant up and tells it to start protecting itself.


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