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from the instant-drought-tolerance...just-add-water dept.
Even under normal circumstances, drought is a regular occurrence in agricultural regions. Several human-driven trends, from groundwater depletion to climate change, are expected to aggravate natural water shortages. While crops can't be expected to be very productive during times of drought, it might be possible to at least get them to better tolerate short periods of water scarcity without dying.
Efforts to that end have largely focused on traditional breeding between commercial crops and drought-tolerant relatives. But researchers are now reporting progress with an alternative approach: genetic engineering. They have taken a signaling network that plants normally use to respond to stresses such as lack of water and have rewired it so that it responds to a molecule that's normally used to kill fungus.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/plants-engineered-for-on-demand-drought-tolerance/
[Abstract]: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature14123.html
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday February 05 2015, @09:03AM
So now they add another reason to put poison on the plants.
What did they say it is normally triggered on?
So in other words, in a drought it is activated anyway.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.