Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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An Indian scientist in the U.K. is working on a way to grow crops in arsenic-contaminated soil, a study which is likely to have wide ranging impact for farmers in northeastern India. Dr. Mohan T.C., from Dr. Alex Jones Laboratory at the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, conducted a pilot study in transgenic Barley and is now looking at doing it in rice plants following funding from the Medical and Life Sciences Research Fund, U.K. The university made the announcement on Wednesday, to mark World Soil Day on December 5. “To stop the cancer-causing arsenic entry into the food chain, it is essential to develop safe crops, through restricting the translocation of arsenic to edible part,” he said. “In our current project, we are trying to manipulate cytokinin hormone in rice plants through genetic engineering and we expect to increase the roots detoxification capacity of the transgenic rice,” he said. Presence of arsenic in soil is a worldwide problem.
