Plants have coping mechanisms when they lack water, but they come at a cost.
Months of persistent drought have had a devastating effect on crops across Slovakia.
But scientists at the Institute of Chemistry of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) say they have acquired an original culture of a red yeast with specific properties that could help at least one crop cope better with the kind of blistering heat and lack of rainfall the country has seen since spring.
And now the institute is partnering with a company that deals with microbial solutions for agriculture to test the yeast in a real-world situation.
Lab tests have shown that when maize grains are treated with a special suspension with live yeast cells, it promotes germination, growth and vitality of plants under stress from drought.
