As soon as you enter Fifield Hall, one of the hubs for the school of horticultural sciences, you know you are entering a place of pure passion for plants. No other building on campus would have an announcement over the loud speaker, "free sweet corn out front, take as much as you like." Balasubramani Rathinasabapathi, who has a doctorate in horticulture, is an associate professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida. One of his recent projects on high heat tolerance in tobacco and tomatoes may be the answer to survival for a world threatened by global warming. "Initially, plant growth was unexpected," said Walid Fouad, a graduate student of Rathinasabapathi. "Our original experiment was designed to learn how plants make beta-alanine, an essential amino acid." After successfully confirming tobacco plants expressing the E. coli gene performed better at extremely high temperatures, Rathinasabapathi decided to conduct the experiment on a crop economically important to Florida. High temperature stress is a serious threat to plant growth, fruit set and crop yield. The discovery of high heat tolerance in tomatoes could potentially be revolutionary. "We have only conducted one experiment so far and it has been successful, Rathinasabapathi said. "However, it is too soon to confirm whether the gene will be useful for stress tolerance under field conditions." Experiments on the plants are continuing this summer, but it takes several seasons to confirm if this gene benefits the tomato crop. If global warming continues to threaten and proves to be true, this technology will be necessary in order for the world's food crop to survive. "Dr. Rathinasabapathi's work on the high heat tolerance of tobacco and tomatoes is very promising," Fouad said. "It is also expected that other crops such as soy beans and maize will perform just as well." | 
