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摘要

ASURPRISE discovery may someday affect how you grow corn. It may also make hybrid seed corn easier and cheaper to produce.Burkhard Schulz and Gurmukh Johal set out to prove that by removing a natural plant steroid from corn, they could shorten the plant. The naturally occurring steroid is brassinosteroid. "It's essential to change the architecture of plants to minimize howmuch land we need to produce food and fuels," Schulz says. "If you find a natural mutation or mechanism that gives you what you need, you are much better off than using transgenic techniques that could be difficult to get approval for." Not only did they prove what they expected, but they also found something they never expected.