For wheat and other grain crops, trying to stop predators is like trying to stop a burglary in which the house alarm goes off after the burglar has left.
Farmers arrive like police inspectors only to find a ransacked crop and incredible loss of money.
But thanks to research being done at Kansas State University, wheat, rice and sorghum are being strengthened to defend themselves before predators like fungi and insects strike. The new defense is called chitinase, an enzyme which breaks down the biological substance chitin. Chitin is a carbohydrate found in the digestive lining and hard exoskeleton of insects and the cell walls of fungi. Subbaratnam Muthukrishnan, professor of biochemistry at K-State, and his research team introduced chitinase genes into grain plants. These fortified plants turn the tables on would-be parasites by giving them an essentially toxic substance to chew on.