Geneticists Develop Salt-Tolerant Tomato

In a breakthrough that could boost food production in many parts of the world, University of Toronto biologists have inserted a single gene from a relative of the cabbage into a tomato plant to create the first crop able to grow in salty water and soil. The genetically engineered tomato imprisons the salt in compartments within cells of its leaves and also removes salt from the soil, the team reported in the August Nature Biotechnology. Commercially useful salt-tolerant tomato plants could be available within three years, the researchers said.

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C ompiled by Times medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II