Magnesium Salt Tolerant Plants and Salt Tolerant Crops

Advantages

• First method to confer high magnesium (Mg) salt tolerance in plants.
• Method using genome editing with proven practical application on plants.
• No effects other than high Mg²⁺ tolerance, applicable to many crops.
• Combined with sodium salt (NaCl) tolerance, salt-tolerant crops can be developed.

Background and Technology

Salt damage to crops caused by large typhoons and rising sea levels due to abnormal weather conditions caused by global warming has become a serious problem in many regions of the world. As global warming is expected to increase salt damage to crops in the future, it is desirable to produce crops that are resistant to salt damage. The main causes of salt damage are high concentrations of Na⁺ and Mg²⁺ ions in seawater, and the mechanisms of Na+ tolerance have been well studied, but the sensing and tolerance mechanisms of Mg²⁺ are not clear.
We have elucidated part of the mechanism by which plants sense Mg²⁺ concentrations and developed a method to control it by genome editing. As a result, we succeeded in conferring tolerance to high Mg²⁺ concentrations in plants.
This mechanism is widely conserved from angiosperms to gymnosperms and can confer high concentration Mg²⁺ tolerance to many crops.

Reference and Patent

• Already presented at conference

Principal Investigator

Hitoshi ONOUCHI (Hokkaido University Research Faculty of Agriculture)

Current Stage and Next Step

• The mechanism by which plants sense Mg²⁺ concentration has been controlled by genome editing, and a high Mg²⁺ tolerant Arabidopsis thaliana has already been produced (upper figure).
• In the future, we want to demonstrate this in various crops and combine it with Na salt tolerance to produce salt-tolerant crops. We are looking for partner companies to cooperate in research and development.

Project No. BK-04417