growing food in space tagged posts

QUT researchers Dr Julia Bally and Professor Peter Waterhouse have discovered a plant with huge genome properties that can have the potential to be the ‘laboratory rat’ of the molecular plant world. This could open the door for such things as space-based food production Credit: Erika Fish

Professor Peter Waterhouse, a plant geneticist at QUT, discovered the gene in the ancient Australian native tobacco plant Nicotiana benthamiana, known as Pitjuri to Aboriginals.

Prof Waterhouse made the discovery while tracing the history of the Pitjuri plant, which for decades has been used by geneticists as a model plant upon which to test viruses and vaccines. “This plant is the ‘laboratory rat’ of the molecular plant world,” he said, “we think of it as a magical plant with amazing properties.

“We now ...