Patent ID: 7432416

Claim:
A method of producing increased drought tolerance in a plant, said method comprising: a) introducing into plant cells 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 to produce transformed cells overexpressing the DRO2 polypeptide, wherein overexpression of the DRO 2 polypeptide confers drought tolerance to said plant cells; b) growing the transformed cells to produce a transgenic plant and c) identifying said transgenic plant with increased drought tolerance by measuring relative water content of the transgenic plant in comparison to an untransformed plant, whereby the drought tolerant transgenic plant has a higher water content than said untransformed plant.