Patent ID: 7795499

Claim:
A method, comprising: identifying a plant with defective endogenous DRO2 activity; transforming the plant having defective endogenous DRO2 activity with a plant transformation vector comprising a heterologous constitutive promoter operatively linked to a nucleotide sequence that encodes a DRO2 polypeptide comprising an amino acid sequence having at least 95% sequence identity to the amino acid sequence of SEQ ID NO:2, wherein the heterologous constitutive promoter provides overexpression of a DRO2 transcript encoding said DRO2 polypeptide; subjecting the transformed plant to water deprivation; and measuring the relative water content of the transformed plant, wherein an increase in relative water content of the transformed plant as compared to a control plant which did not receive the plant transformation vector indicates that the transformed plant has increased drought tolerance, and thereby imparting drought tolerance to the plant which had defective endogenous DRO2 activity prior to said transformation.