Dr Siddiqi's project can ensure food for millions

                     Dr Siddiqi's project can ensure food for millions

     Dr Siddiqi's

  Dr Imran Siddiqi's research on hybrid plants can ensure enough food for millions of Indians. He has also won the Infosys Prize for 2011 in Life Sciences. Dr Imran Siddiqi isn't fooled by appearances. India's green revolution gave food to millions. But many of the plants in Dr Siddiqi's research are hybrids with different breeds crossed together, to ensure a bumper yield. But if one takes seeds from such hybrids and replant them - the next generation of plants don't produce nearly as much grain. "What this means is that farmers have to go back and buy new seeds for every planting. This is what seed companies make their money on,

" Dr Siddiqi said. At the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderbad

, Doctor Siddiqi researches if the natural offspring of any plant can be exact clones of the parent and whether they can carry on all the great traits of the parent without any change. All plants have two copies of genes inside their cells. One from the mother, the other from the father. When new seeds are formed, both the parents' genes get mixed and matched at random. This mixing is why offspring share traits with both parents but aren't exact copies. What Siddiqi wants is something different. "Reproduction, without mixing from the two parents as such," Siddiqi said. As it turns out, such plants do exist in nature. Among them is a relative of the common mustard. Scientists always suspected special genes in these plants let them reproduce without jumbling their traits. They just didn't know which ones till Dr Siddiqi cracked the code. Dr Siddiqi explained, "Our work has shown that by manipulating between two to four genes that control the way chromosomes or genetic information is shared, you can manipulate the sexual process, so that re-assortment does not happen." The real good news is that the genes Dr Siddiqi tinkered with are found not just in the mustard relatives he used, but in all plants. It will take years to perfect but one day his technique could be used to modify high yielding hybrids humans really need, like rice and wheat, to make them naturally produce top quality seeds for every planting season. If that happens, it would be a revolution. A way of ensuring plentiful food for everyone. What they have now is a proof of principle. But when they actually make it work in food grains, people intend to share their knowledge with everyone. "There is a strong sense that the technology, when it is implemented, should be as far as possible in the public domain. Because the research that has led to the advances till now has been supported by public funding," Dr Siddiqi said.