Eat your heart out Monty Don. North-East plant scientists have developed a way of breeding superplants packed with nutrients. Health Editor Barry Nelson investigates.

WHEN scientists announced that they were able to manipulate the genes of plants to make them resistant to pests or to produce a higher yield, it seemed that the end of world poverty might be in sight.

But fears that adding new genes to plants could go terribly wrong, leading to crop failures, new diseases or other unforseen environmental consequences, led to the UK and most of Europe imposing tight restrictions on this new scientific field.

Dubbed 'Frankenstein Foods' by some sections of the press, GM (Genetically Modified) food has largely been excluded from European markets although the US and much of the developing world is pressing ahead with the use of GM food products.

So the recent announcement that two North-East scientists have developed a new way of altering and enhancing the performance of plants, without necessarily using the GM approach, is attracting a good deal of commercial attention.

Professors Toni Slabas and Keith Lindsey, from Durham University, have spent the last ten years perfecting their unique approach to plant enhancement.

Remarkably, if the early promise is sustained, it could lead to the development of a range of crops which have enhanced properties, such as oilseed rape which produces oils much richer in healthy fatty acids like Omega 3 and Omega 6, essential dietary substances which are increasingly being seen as a vital part of a healthy diet.

It could also boost the amount of starch produced by crops, an element in food which is increasingly being seen as a powerful anti-cancer agent.

Recent studies in County Durham primary schools have confirmed that children who find it difficult to concentrate or who have behavioural difficulties benefit from daily doses of food supplements containing Omega 3 and Omega 6. Adults can also benefit from supplements.

But the new technology developed at Durham holds out the prospect of much more.

The two scientists, both internationally-recognised experts in the fields of plant biochemistry, molecular biology and developmental genetics, believe that they will be able to use their new technique dramatically to increase the yield of each individual plant, producing more saleable products from fewer plants.

They expect that their new technology - dubbed 'proteonomics' - can also be used to make plants more resistant to pests and diseases.

Producing more food from the same number of plants and increasing the yields of healthy substances such as oil and starch are just two elements in the equation.

The professors, who have formed a company - Creative Gene Technologies - to exploit their invention, are also interested in the potentially lucrative field of bio-fuels.

THEY believe they will be able to manipulate crops which already provide the raw materials for so-called 'biodiesel' to produce plants which can produce more litres per hectare of fuel than any crop in existence.

With the world demand for oil spiralling and the price of petrol and diesel soaring at the pumps, this aspect of proteonomics could be hugely significant.

So what is the secret of proteonomics, which holds out the prospect of revolutionising the way crops are grown?

Prof Lindsey explains that their technique owes much to the traditional approach to plant breeding - encouraging selective traits in some plants and excluding unwanted traits in others - but it is enhanced by 21st century advances in the field of plant genetics.

This means that the Durham University team can speed up the process of selective breeding because of their increased knowledge of what each plant gene can do.

A key development occurred at the end of 2000 when a humble weed called the arabidopsis became the first plant to have its entire genetic structure - or 'genome' - sequenced. While scientists now know the sequence of the plant's 30,000-plus genes, the key is to understand the function of each gene.

The beauty of the arabidopsis is that it is very closely related to oilseed rape and other food crops such as barley, and the genes are likely to perform similar functions.

"We are trying to figure out what all these genes do by carrying out experiments in our lab. The main reason we have chosen this plant is that it has got a small genome and it is very gene-rich, " says Prof Lindsey.

"Before plant breeders got to oilseed rape, it used to have a lot of unhealthy saturated fats in it but that has been bred out over a long period of time by conventional breeding. We can do the same but more quickly."

However, he stresses that much remains to be done.

"We are in the business of trying to find the genetic basis for important traits in plants. We have some idea of what some of the genes do but we don't know which have the major impact on yield.

That is what we are trying to identify, " he says.

"Some genes act like molecular switches, which activate pathways. We have identified genes that switch on starches and oils for various uses, not just food but for industrial processes such as biofuels."

A term in use for what the Durham team are trying to do is "metabolic engineering". "It is about flicking a switch and understanding how it can switch on this whole process of making these oils and starches, " the professor adds.

Unlike GM technology, which involves cloning a gene for a particular purpose and then inserting it into the chromosome of a plant, the CGT approach is to adopt a speeded-up version of traditional cross-breeding.

"Since we have the information on which genes are important, we can track them in the offspring of lots of crosses to find the ones which have the useful gene. Then you pick the ones that are doing the job and get rid of the ones that don't have the qualities you are interested in, " he adds.

WHILE the Durham technique uses 'non-GM' methods, the scientists say their approach could also easily be adapted in an environment where GM is tolerated.

"Our plant cell technology can be used in different ways. In Europe, the plant breeders that don't use GM are likely to be more interested in this but we could also license it for use in places like the US, China or India, who are quite happy about using them in a GM context, " says Prof Lindsey.

CGT recently benefited from a £200,000 cash injection from the Centre for Excellence for Life Sciences (CELS), the regional agency set up to encourage growth in the North-East's healthcare sector. But Prof Lindsey knows that more resources will be needed if their technology is to be properly exploited.

"We are talking to some multinational companies at the moment with a view to trying to develop a strategic alliance.

That is currently in progress, " says Prof Lindsey.

"What we are developing here in the North-East offers a new way forward for producing healthier, cheaper food products as well as greener, cheaper fuels. It is very exciting."