Each year, thousands of acres of crops are planted throughout Africa, Asia and Australia only to be laid to waste by a parasitic plant called Striga, also known as witchweed. It is one of the largest challenges to food security in Africa, and a team of scientists led by researchers from the University of Toronto have discovered chemicals and genes that may break Striga’s stranglehold.
“In sub-Saharan Africa alone, Striga has infected up to two-thirds of the arable land,” said U of T cell and systems biologist Peter McCourt, principal investigator of a study published this week in Nature Chemical Biology. “With chemicals and genes in hand that influence strigolactone production in plants, we should be able to manipulate the level of this compound by chemical application or plant breeding which would break the Striga-crop interaction.
The research team includes members from the University of Toronto’s Department of Cell and Systems Biology and Centre for Analysis of Genome Evolution and Function, as well as the RIKEN Plant Science Center in Yokahama, Japan.
*The post is written by – Kim Luke