Understanding the genetic code of so-called "resurrection plants," botanical species that survive years without water, could someday lead to drought-resistant crops, scientists say.
As climate change threatens more and longer-lasting drought, such crops could help famers deal with increasingly hostile growing conditions, they say.
The clue to such crops may be found in the more than 130 global varieties of resurrection plants, a unique family of species capable of surviving for years in periods of extreme water scarcity.
They do so by becoming completely dry, like a seed, for all intents and purposes appearing dead but coming back to life in just a few hours when rain falls.
Jill Farrant, a University of Cape Town professor of molecular and cell biology, is considered the world's leading expert in the study of such plants.
She wants to make food crops in Africa more drought-resistant and resilient by taking cues from the genetic makeup of resurrection species.
She has been working with teff, a native grass in Ethiopia long used in the region as a staple food.
She says she's hoping to make it more drought-resistant by activating genes she has found in her work on resurrection plants, in an effort to help African farmers adapt to the challenges of climate change.
"I want to cater to the subsistence farmer, the person who wants to make enough food to live," she says. "Farmers are becoming more and more dispirited, and droughts are killing them."
Farrant, the daughter of a farmer, says resurrection plants have fascinated her since childhood, when as a 9-year-old she stumbled across one and was astounded by its apparent immortal qualities.
"I wrote in my diary about a plant that had died and came back after the rain," she says.
She has made the plants the focus of her professional career since 1994.
Her work has taken on increased urgency amid reports from the United Nations Environment Program that climate change may reduce the yield of some crops in southern Africa by close to 30 percent by 2030.
Experts in the field stress the importance of adapting to such eventualities.
"Soil, cropping systems, farming systems - they all must have the capacity to recover from a drastic change in climate," says Ohio State University professor of soil science Rattan Lal.
If the survival power of resurrection plants can be harnessed, Farrant says, farmers' crops - and the farmers themselves - could face improved chances of survival.
"If it doesn't rain, it doesn't matter, at least your plants won't die," she says. "The moment they get rain, they're ready to go."
