Drought prone areas have been increasing around the world, and due to climate change, it is expected that these areas will only further increase and become more severe. Therefore, the need for drought tolerant crops is imperative. The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is the fourth most important food crop in the world, and increasing this crop's ability to tolerate drought stress could aid in feeding our growing global population. Transforming the CBF1 gene into plants has been shown to increase the plants' freezing, drought and saline stress tolerance. CBF1 genes from Arabidopsis thaliana, Solanum commersonii and Solanum tuberosum have been transformed into cultivated potato lines under the stress inducible promoter COR15a. The AtCBF1 lines were evaluated using an electrolyte leakage assay and field trials. Two of the lines, E74.8 and E74.9 showed the lowest percent of electrolyte leakage and were able to maintain a yield similar to the wild type control under drought stressed field conditions. The ScCBF1 and StCBF1 lines were evaluated using an in vitro osmotic stress assay. Two of the ScCBF1 lines and five of the StCBF1 lines were able to outperform the wild type controls. A questionnaire was developed to study the effect of information on college students' attitudes towards genetically modified potatoes. It was found that those whom received the information were more approving of GM potatoes for human consumption, and felt they were safer, than those in the control group. However, the information had no effect on their willingness to consume foods with GM potato ingredients.
Read
