It's in your nature

The secret of the plants of the Atacama desert in Chile

Audio 02:41

The Atacama Desert, Chile.

© CC0 Pixabay/Sebastian Baszczyj

By: Florent Guignard Follow

3 mins

A promising scientific study was published a few weeks before COP 15 in Abidjan devoted to the fight against desertification.

A Franco-Chilean team has isolated the molecules responsible for the resistance to drought in around twenty plants from the Atacama Desert, the driest region in the world.

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The landscapes are Martian, struck by a blazing sun, where NASA is testing devices.

Here the earth is ocher, " 

, wrote the French poet Louis Aragon.

It is home to half of the world's lithium reserves.

Not a human soul, not a tree, not a bird for hundreds of kilometers between the Pacific and the Andes.

Between 2,000 and 4,500 meters above sea level.

Nature is necessarily hostile.

Almost not a drop of water.

0.1 millimeter of rain per year on average.

It rains 250 times more in the Sahara.

The most inhospitable of deserts 

It is the driest place in the world (except for the "dry valleys" of Antarctica where there has been no rainfall for 2 million years!)

And yet, some plants live in the Atacama Desert, which could be useful for the future of humanity, as a study carried out by the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and the University of Bordeaux has just shown, and published a few weeks before the COP-15 in Abidjan, the world summit dedicated to the fight against desertification which ends this Friday, May 20.

“The Atacama Desert is a particularly interesting environment for scientists,

describes Pierre Pétriacq, teacher-researcher at the University of Bordeaux and at Inrae, the national institute for agro-food and environmental research.

Resilient plants

But, in this desert of apocalypse, sometimes all it takes is a miracle: a little rain, and seeds that have been half-mast for years begin to germinate.

The desert is covered with flowers - but it is exceptional.

Rain can also be deadly, as American researchers had observed after a very unusual heavy downpour, which had caused the massive extinction of microbial species present in the desert.

Plants do need water.

But when there is a lack of water, how do they adapt?

Despite everything, and despite negative temperatures at night, some plant species adapt to this extreme environment.

Franco-Chilean scientists studied 24 Atacama plants to isolate, using an artificial intelligence program, the molecules responsible for their resilience.

Metabolic Toolbox 

“This is the interest of our study: we were able to highlight a certain number of markers which are common to all the species of plants that we were able to study in the desert,

explains Pierre Pétriacq.

And it is this toolbox that should allow INRAE, within a few years, after selection work, to develop tomatoes or cereals that are more resistant to drought.

THE QUESTION OF THE WEEK

“Is the big condor that big?

»

The emblematic vulture of the Andes Cordillera, black plumage and white collar, is the bird of all records: the heaviest flying bird in the world (more than 12 kilos on average for the male), the one which possesses on average the largest wingspan, more than 3 meters.

It is also the highest bird in the sky, up to 6,000 meters.

Finally, the large condor has the greatest longevity of the poultry kingdom: half a century on average in the wild, even longer in captivity.

Even though he doesn't live in the Atacama Desert, he gets very hot at times.

To cool its body, it urinates on its paws.

He relieves himself and it relieves.

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• Biodiversity

• Environment

• Chile