File:Coast watch (1979) (20650696012).jpg

Title: Coast watch
Identifier: coastwatch00uncs_8 (find matches)
Year: 1979 (1970s)
Authors: UNC Sea Grant College Program
Subjects: Marine resources; Oceanography; Coastal zone management; Coastal ecology
Publisher: (Raleigh, N. C. : UNC Sea Grant College Program)
Contributing Library: State Library of North Carolina
Digitizing Sponsor: North Carolina Digital Heritage Center

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says Bird. "They live in sandy soils that have almost no nutrients. You have whole groups of plants that have learned to grow and flower and reproduce fairly well under what are pretty crummy conditions. "These are the kinds of conditions that a lot of agronomists would like to start trying to adapt plants for so that in regular agriculture, we don't need to use so much fertilizer. Or we can use brackish- water wells in western states where the wells have now gone from freshwater to brackish in nature." Disease resistance is another benefit of tweaking the genes of marine plants. John Gallagher and Denise Seliskar, Sea Grant scientists at the Univer- sity of Delaware, are developing more hardy varieties of dune plants for the Eastern Sea- board. For example, American beachgrass is the major stabilizing plant on ocean dunes of the mid- and North Atlantic, but it is highly susceptible to disease caused by pathogenic nematodes. Through in vitro selection, the botanists are trying to isolate nematode- resistant plant lines. They are also tinkering with a more cold- tolerant strain of sea oats, which are less susceptible to nematode attack. Sea oats are natu- rally concentrated along the Southeast Atlantic and Gulf coasts, but Gallagher and Seliskar hope to extend the species beyond its northern range. They have planted a genetically manipulated crop of sea oats on a dune at Broadkill Beach, Del., that has survived for five winters. Although mutations occur and are even encouraged in some research, micropropagation is generally considered a "true" method of replication. Through this vegetative or asexual process, culturists produce genuine clones that are identical to the donor or parent plant. Whether the goal is a homogenous supercrop of leafy Boston ferns or stands of sea oats with extensive root systems, standard tissue culture can produce it. The possibilities are tantalizing. But the implications and concerns are Photo courtesy of Michael Kan
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Micropropagated pickerelweed, a freshwater wetland blooms in the field. multiplying as fast as the plants. Some ecologists worry about the use of cloned plants to restore the environ- ment; they are uneasy about a possible lack of genetic diversity in replanted seagrass beds and marshes. Others argue that we don't even know what level of diversity exists within native populations. Again, scientists are scrambling to provide answers. Through genetic mapping and DNA fingerprinting, researchers are trying to paint a picture of the genetic diversity that exists in the wild. Just as a group of people in a room show differences in inherited eye color, height, body proportions and metabolism, individual plants within a habitat can also show variation, says Bird. The accumulation of these differences is the amount of genetic diversity that occurs within a species. Early data showed little genetic variation within seagrasses and other wetland plants, but the powerful lens of biotechnology is beginning to provide better resolution, Bird says. Restoration biologists and tissue culture scientists anxiously await the results of these genetic analyses. Once they understand how much diversity is present in wetland plants, micropropagators can aim to develop multiple lines of genetically different plants in culture. The result may be an extensive library of replacement plant stock appropriate for a wide range of restoration. But with all its potential, microprop- agation is not creating "roboplants" com- pletely immune to the ravages that have weakened marine environments in the first place. "Until we correct the ecological causes of habitat loss, we're not going to be able to restore the habitats and have them remain," says Bird. "And so this is going to have to be the first real goal of any kind of long-term management of our bays and estuaries. "It's a tough battle, but we have to keep pointing out that there's tremendous value — tremendous economic value — in all of our wetlands." □ plant, COASTWATCH 21

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