Passage 60
学霸导读 环境问题日益严峻，科学家们正努力研究如何培育一种“新型植物”来保护我们免受气候变化带来的危害。
Ever since humans f irst walked the earth, we have relied on plants for our survival. They provide us with food, shelter, medicine and even the oxygen we breathe. Now, a team of scientists is wondering w 1 they can protect us from climate change as well.
Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego launched a new initiative （ 倡议，新方案 ） to improve the a 2 of plants to suck carbon dioxide （ 二氧化碳 ） out of the atmosphere and store it deep in the soil. They call it “Harnessing Plants”.
All plants make a substance （ 物质 ） called suberin （ 软木脂 ） that protects their roots. You are likely f 3 with it even if you don’t know it. It’s the same material as the cork （ 软木塞 ） in your wine bottle. It’s also the material that makes up the skin of a potato.
The unique properties of suberin help plants in many ways. It makes them more tolerant （ 能耐……的 ） of drought and， at the same time， better able to s 4 f loods. It also serves as a protection a 5 disease. But perhaps most importantly for the group’s goals， suberin is a substance which is very diff icult for bacteria （ 细菌 ） and fungi （ 真菌 ） to b 6 down. Joseph Noel， a chemical biologist at Salk who is working on the project， f irst discovered this after throwing a cork from a wine bottle in his compost （ 堆肥 ） at home.
Further research in the lab revealed that suberin is one of the most stable forms of carbon in the soil. That means once carbon from the atmosphere makes it into the ground in the form of suberin, it will stay put.
Armed with this information， one of the group’s f irst goals is to breed （ 培育 ） a v 7 of plants that can produce more suberin than they currently do. “We want them to make bigger and d 8 roots with more suberin，” said Joanne Chory， a plant biologist at Salk who is leading the initiative.
Of course, to have an i 9 on the global carbon cycle, they will have to exist on an enormous scale. In the longer term, the group plans to partner with governments around the world to distribute seeds to farmers.
“Five percent of the world’s crop land is what we want to change over,” Chory said.
It’s an enormous goal， and even Chory a 10 that it may sound a bit crazy. But she also believes that the group’s work is a step toward creating a more sustainable （ 可持续发展的 ） planet.
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高频词汇
property /'prɒpəti/ n. 特性，性能
reveal /rɪ'viːl/ v. 揭示，显示，揭露
stay put 固定不动；留在原地
distribute /dɪ'strɪbjuːt/ v. 分发；分配；分散