New research suggests - Ethanol plays a vital role in increasing the sustainability of plants.

Ethanol is an organic compound. It is also called alcohol, ethyl alcohol, and grain alcohol. A new study shows that a dose of Ethanol also known as common alcohol can help plants withstanding the heat stress, which can destroy them. This could also offer for creating low-cost crops more resilient to the effects of climate change.

Global warming is increasing day by day. Along with affecting other environmental sources, it is also affecting crops on a large scale as it increases crop losses due to the heat effect. Thus it is very necessary to discover ways to protect the sustainability of agriculture.

One such powerful technique is Genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is also called genetic modification or genetic manipulation. It is the modification and manipulation of an organism's genes using technology.

 But the solutions we adopt are easier and more affordable to implement. Motoaki Seki of the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science says “We need to develop novel, simple, and less expensive technologies because genetically modified plants are not readily available in all countries".

So, pre-treating crops with safe chemical compounds is a promising approach to withhold this issue. Scientists are exploring this approach by exploring the ability of a variety of chemicals to increase the tolerance among plants to handle environmental stresses.

Now the researchers have found that simply applying ethanol to plants before heat exposure can increase their tolerance to heat. Researcher Seki says,” External application of ethanol could be a simple, cheap and effective way to enhance heat tolerance in a variety of plants".

The team exposed lettuce and thale cress to a low concentration of ethanol in their soil for several days. Then treated and untreated plants were grown at temperatures high enough to prevail against heat stress. Of all the plants only 10% of the untreated plants survived, whereas the survival count is 70% for the treated plants. This indicates the significant impact of ethanol.

Through this study, the researchers also learned clues about the molecular mechanisms behind the effect. The molecular mechanism is explored by genetic and biochemical testing.

The researchers also identified a set of genes and biochemical processes which are activated due to the ethanol treatment.

As a feature of response, this study shows the increased production of a protein called Binding Protein-3. It is involved in stress adaption in an organelle called the endoplasmic reticulum. This type of response is known as unfolded protein response, as it decreases the severity of the effects of misfolding of proteins. Due to environmental stress, misfolded proteins result when a protein follows the wrong folding pathway or energy-minimizing funnel.

Researchers intend to gather further insights into the mechanism. Researcher Seki says, “Although we found the unfolded-protein response is involved, we now need to undertake further studies to reveal the undiscovered aspects of the ethanol-mediated network for environment-stress adaptation”.

Learning more about the mechanism will help reveal more ways to enhance the protective effect. This will perhaps fine-tune it for benefiting a wide range of species.