MALAYSIANS AMONG SCIENTISTS AT WORLD CONFERENCE ON BIOLOGY

By Neville D'Cruz

MELBOURNE, Sept 17 (Bernama) -- Two Malaysian PhD candidates will be among
more than 220 scientists who will meet at a five-day conference in Adelaide,
Australia, starting Monday to discuss the biology of plant membranes, which is
crucial to developing crops that will feed people into the future.

They are Tiong Jingwen from Kuala Lumpur and Maclin Dayod from Kuching,
Sarawak. Both are studying agriculture at the University of Adelaide.

"Agriculture today is tough and according to a recent United Nations report
we will need to produce more food in the next 50 years than we have in the past
10,000 years, but environmental issues like drought and salinity are limiting
crop yields and food production," said conference convenor Dr Matthew Gilliham
from the University of Adelaide's Waite Research Institute.

"Humanity is not likely to meet these challenges through more cows, sheep
and fish, but rather through improved plants that can grow better in harsh
conditions with limited resources. Understanding how plants work is crucial to
ensuring a secure food supply," he said.

Presentations at the conference will discuss the science underpinning how
plants acquire and use water and nutrients, and how they survive in marginal
environments.

Topics will include the tolerance of plants to soils affected by salt,
aluminium, boron and drought, and increasing plant production through improving
nutrient and water use efficiency.

"These are major issues for world agricultural production today due to
climate change and increasing fertiliser prices," Gilliham said in a statement.

Leading scientists in these areas will converge in Adelaide from around the
world, including Japan, the United States, France, Germany, Britain and Saudi
Arabia.

Tiong, who is based at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics,
University of Adelaide, is learning to increase zinc content in grains of cereal
crops to improve human nutrition.

In 2008, the Copenhagen Consensus ranked deficiency of Vitamin A and zinc as
the number one global challenge, zinc deficiency in diets inhibits brain
development and is correlated with low IQ (intelligence quotient). In countries,
such as Malaysia where cereals such as rice and barley are staple crops, this
can be a significant problem.

Dayod, who is sponsored by the Sarawak state government, is studying how
plants regulate water loss and how this relates to plant nutrition.

This work will advance efforts to improve water use efficiency of plants
which relates to drought stress tolerance, and to the development of crops with
increased calcium content.
-- BERNAMA