TechCast at UMass Looks at How Genetic Engineering Develops New Crops, Including Toxin-Resistant Rice

April 24, 2008

Contact:

Ed Blaguszewski 413/545-0444

AMHERST, Mass. – The University of Massachusetts Amherst’s third installment of its podcast series on breakthrough discoveries focuses on how genetic engineering is being used to produce new plant strains that produce more food and help fight pollution. One key crop that is affected is rice, a staple for much of the world and a food that is scarcer and more expensive than it has been in recent years.

TechCast at UMass offers its third episode that includes interviews with Om Parkash, assistant professor of plant, soil and insect sciences, and Nick deCristofaro, director of the UMass Amherst Office of Commercial Ventures & Intellectual Property (CVIP).

Each month a new episode is created and posted at
www.umasstechcast.org, where it can be downloaded to a computer or portable audio player. Visitors to the site also can subscribe to automatically receive new episodes of the podcast.

Parkash is using molecular biology, genetic engineering, physiology and biochemistry to understand how plants tolerate toxic heavy metals, create plants that remove those toxins from soils and the environment; and develop crops that resist absorbing toxins, thereby making food safer.

Parkash is developing a new plant-based technology for cleaning up toxins such as cadmium and arsenic in the environment. It’s called phytoremediation. This part of his project will protect people, animals and soil against arsenic contamination. By blocking certain genes, Parkash can make the plants absorb more toxic heavy metals. With CVIP’s help, Parkash hopes new seed strains using his work can be brought to the marketplace.

He’s also enhancing genes in food crops that will make them do the opposite: they’ll resist taking up toxins so that the food people eat is safer. This could be critical at a time when food crops are being used to make biofuels and shortages of foods such as rice are developing around the world.

CVIP’s deCristofaro will discuss how the work of a scientist such as Parkash can be moved from the laboratory to the market place. At UMass Amherst, CVIP is the entry point for technology transfer questions, and it plays a lead role in finding commercial partners for new discoveries. In addition, CVIP assists faculty, staff and students to
secure sponsored research funds and to transform their ideas, inventions and creative works into products and services that have economic paybacks to inventors, sponsors and the university.

TechCast at UMass is produced under the direction of the Office of News and Information at UMass Amherst in conjunction with CVIP. The program host is Francesca Rheannon, an award-winning producer whose work has been heard on National Public Radio, including WFCR in Amherst. The series is supported by a generous gift from UMass Amherst alumnus Lewis J. Geffen.

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