An interview with...

Eduardo Blumwald

Professor of Cell Biology, UC Davis

 

What sparked your interest in salt resistant tomatoes?

Well, this started really….almost 20 years ago, and the idea essentially was try to find a solution for the increased salinization of soils in the world. As you know, water resources are really diminishing and on top of that we are losing a lot of land worldwide to erosion and salinity. Salt accumulate(s) in the soil, and plants cannot grow. So the idea was, since trying to change the soil situation is almost impossible - because its very, very expensive and essentially we'll come back anyway. So the idea was, okay, can we now modify the plant in order to be able to grow in such adverse conditions? And that's what we have done.

What's the process your employing to transform your tomatoes?

The technique is actually very simple. What we did is we modified a gene of the plant - this is the same gene of the same plant. The only thing we have done is we have modified it in order to have much more of the gene product; this is a protein. What the protein does, it mediates the accumulation of salt inside large storage compartments that plants have called vacuos. So the plant can grow in salty water, dump the sodium in those compartments, and by doing that is able to grow and eventually also bring water to the plant. We also found that although the leaves accumulate a lot of salt, the fruits of the seeds do not. So this is an ideal solution to grow those plants in salty soils - and California has a big problem with that.

How long did it take you to develop this technique?

Well, in theory we started as I say almost 20 years ago; 18 years ago. Now, 18 years after we have as you see plants that are growing and I assume that in another 3, 4 or 5 years, we'll be able to have some varieties of release to the farmers.

What impact do you see from this new strain of tomato?

Well, there's no impact yet. There's no impact yet because there's no product yet. But I believe that this is going to have a big impact, and the reason is that we are going to be able not only to use marginal lands, but also use marginal water. And as you know, water is a big problem, not only in California, but everywhere.

Are you targeting specific regions with this technology?

In California, we are talking about the Valley of course. The Imperial Valley, the San-Joaquin Valley are seeing a really big increments of sodium content in the soil. But also the water - our water is getting saltier and saltier every time. This is in California, but worldwide everywhere. The problems of salinity are not only in California. Ohio has problems now, and Asia, and Latin America, and so on and so on.

In your eyes what does it mean for the Central Valley to have an institution like UC Davis?

Well, the University of California in Davis is one of the biggest agricultural campuses in the United States, and has such amount of talent and facilities and synergy that obviously helped me. That's the reason I moved three years ago from the University of Toronto to the University of California in Davis. This is a prime institution for this research. 18:05