As concern mounts over the impact of climate change on agriculture, Italian scientists are finding ways to cultivate wheat in deserts and make tomatoes grow with a quarter of the water they normally need.
By studying the genes that allow certain varieties of plants to cope with drought, the Italian team has managed to select the hardiest varieties and produce hybrids in which all the crucial genes are present.
Massimo Iannetta, head of the programme run by the ENEA research institute, said a large-scale experiment with some of the new 'low-water' plants has just been completed in the Mexican desert.
"We tried growing selected varieties of cereals and vegetables and the results were excellent. Within a few months we ought to be able to register them and put them on the market," he said.
Although crossing plant varieties is a technique that has been used for centuries to created 'improved' versions, advances in the study of genetics have enabled it to take huge strides.
Stefania Grillo, of the Institute of Vegetal Genetics in Naples, noted however that pinpointing relevant genes and combining them remained an immensely complicated business.
"The response to climatic changes depends on a whole range of different genes," she said, adding that researchers were concentrating on potatoes and tomatoes for now.
In Sicily ENEA researchers are testing new varieties of tomatoes which don't need soil to grow at all. They can be cultivated in special cloches where they sit in a solution of water and nutrients which is continually recycled.
"You can grow a kilo of tomatoes with 15 litres of water instead of 70 litres," Iannetta said.
Another approach to creating water-saving plant crops is through genetic engineering. Cultivating genetically modified plants in Italy is illegal so experiments by Milan university researchers have been confined to the laboratory.
They have recently patented a way of making plants develop pores which are much smaller than normal. This means that in droughts they lose less water through 'transpiration'.
Their genetic engineering method is now being tested on tomatoes and rice.
Roberto Defez, of the Institute of Genetics and Biophysics, said genetic engineering offered a promising avenue for research into drought-resistant crops.
"But the research is slow," he warned. "Applications we see emerging now are based on studies begun in the late 1990s".
