Is it possible to genetically modify a plant (such as a potato or soy bean) to withstand a soil PH 9+.

 

Yes, this had already been done. Vegetables and fruits have even been modified to lengthen the amount of time it takes to ripen.

Basically no. It would be one of the holy grails to adapt plants to successfully adapt plants to extreme environmental conditions. Especially pH is tricky as it affects the physiology on many levels. Accordingly resistance mechanisms and adaptation were found to be rather diffuse and certainly not based on a single gene or small set of genes (which is basically the extent to effective manipulations we can reasonably do now).

The vast majority of resistant plants that were bred were not created by targeted genetic modification.

Basically no. It would be one of the holy grails to adapt plants to successfully adapt plants to extreme environmental conditions. Especially pH is tricky as it affects the physiology on many levels. Accordingly resistance mechanisms and adaptation were found to be rather diffuse and certainly not based on a single gene or small set of genes (which is basically the extent to effective manipulations we can reasonably do now).

The vast majority of resistant plants that were bred were not created by targeted genetic modification.

Yea, my bad. I confused this with a study that engineered plants to withstand high salt conditions.

If you are thinking of durum wheat, it was not produced via GM but by allele-assisted crossing with a wild (resistant) strain.

If I have to modify a plant I will modify it 24/7, I dunno what it will turn into, as long as it lives. I mean increase the rate of reaction, that's the only way to test it. I would like to run a computer simulation if possible, but, currently computer software is not at the molecular stage yet