"The problem is that most of these drought-resistant plants don't give you a good yield when grown under good conditions, with plenty of water," he said.

Farmers would shy away from using such biotechnology because they figure if they have plenty of good weather, they will lose yield, Dennis said.

"We have a technology, a gene, that gives you a plant that's drought resistant," he said. "The system that we've developed switches on only during drought. During normal growth, if a plant's got water, the system is switched off, as if the gene wasn't there."

The technology improves the efficiency of water use under all conditions, Dennis said.

Biotech crops could help ease the annual worldwide drought loss of eight billion dollars, said Russ Sanders of Pioneer High-Bred International, based in Des Moines, Iowa.

The two seed experts spoke at a symposium on the next generation of biotechnology, sponsored by the Canadian consulate and biotech interests, the Minnesota Agri-Growth Council and the University of Minnesota. The meeting was held in St. Paul, the capital of the north-central state of Minnesota.

In the United States, Sanders said, 52 to 61 percent of farmers use biotech corn seeds, and 87 to 89 percent use biotech soybeans.

But some US consumers, and many more in Europe, have expressed concern about "Frankenfood." Still, farmers the world over are adopting such technology, and farmers in Europe are finding they cannot ignore it, Dennis said.

"Transgenic plants have now been grown on more than a billion acres around the world, and farmers are growing them on more than 200 million acres of year," Dennis said. "At some point people are going to have to say all these fears you've got, which are unfounded, are just not coming true. And the benefits are great."

Tests by Performance Plants show a surprising result: these transgenic plants could provide up to 25 percent more yield under tough drought conditions, compared to plants that did not have much drought stress, Dennis told AFP.

By modifying a single gene in the plants, Dennis said, this new kind of crop can improve yields, improve tolerance to drought and heat stress, and improve yield quality.

He expects that in three or four years, the new transgenic crops could be available to corn farmers as well as consumers who want lawns and ornamental plants that stay green, despite drought and heat. The technology could be incorporated in oil seed and other crops after that, he said.

Field tests over four years show this firm's "yield protection technology" works in canola, as well as in petunias and a tiny weed, called Arabidopsis, by creating drought-tolerant mutants, Dennis said.

"The way we are doing it certainly is certainly unique, and I don't know anybody so far who has got a crop out that is drought-resistant," Dennis said. "We are not growing it as a crop yet, but we've shown that we can get drought resistance in canola growing in the field."

Seventy percent of the world's water is used for agriculture. Water shortages, he said, are going to become a "huge" problem in the future, with global warming exacerbating the situation, he told AFP in St. Paul.

"We're hoping to develop plants which actually need less water, so they need less irrigation," he said, "and we'll be able to save water."

"If you get drought from the time you put seed in the ground, there's no way you can protect the plant," Dennis said. "The plants need some water to grow. We are protecting them at the most sensitive time, when they are flowering."

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