BESC - Gene for Enhancing Salt and Drought Tolerance in Plants

The invention provides a gene that plays an important role in CO2 fixation in Agave. Overexpression of the gene significantly improved photosynthetic performance, water-use efficiency and root growth in model plant Nicotiana sylvestris (tobacco). The transgenic tobacco plants exhibited significantly higher salt and drought tolerance compared with wild-type plants. Our technology based will facilitate the engineering of the gene into non-gene containing plants, and has the great potential to address the negative impact of drought and salinity on crop production.