Even though its dainty crown of white flowers is lovely to look at, it would be easy to overlook this little plant growing by the side of the Alaska Highway. The non-botanist might describe Thellungiella salsuginea -- commonly known as salt lick mustard -- as, well, rather innocuous.

But this plant is so unique that two biologists have traveled all of the way from Ontario to study it in its native environment. What's more, they think that this plant could hold clues that could help increase yields on commercial crops like canola.

The salt lick mustard is a true hardy northerner. It can survive droughts and freezing, and -- true to its name -- thrives in salty conditions.

"You can water these plants with sea water, and they will still survive. That's pretty amazing," says David Guevara, a graduate student at McMaster University who has been studying the plant.

This particular plant is growing close to what could well be the saltiest place in the Yukon, the Takhini salt flats north of Whitehorse. In the Yukon, salt lick mustard is only known to grow here and at two other nearby sites.

But even though it is a very rare plant, researchers are not starting from scratch in their studies of it. This mustard is almost identical to one of the most well-known plants in the world, Arabidopsis thaliana, commonly known as mouse-ear cress.

For the past decade, researchers have been sequencing and mapping out the genes of this plant. "It is known as the fruit fly of the plant world," says Marilyn Griffith, a biology professor at the University of Waterloo.

But, oddly enough, even though mouse-ear cress is almost 98 percent identical to its skookum Yukon cousin, the better-known plant is not very hardy at all. It will die when temperatures dip to -7°C while salt lick mustard can survive temperatures below -20°C.

Griffith is one of the lead researchers on a project aimed at figuring out exactly what makes the salt lick mustard so hardy. If they can isolate which genes give this plant its edge, they might be able to use that information for commercial crops.

"We want to know what the genes in the plant actually do. We want to understand the genes involved in the environmental stress responses," she says.

Griffith thinks that there is a link between freezing, salt and drought tolerance. As plants freeze, water is sucked out of the cells to the ice crystals growing outside of them, thus dehydrating the plant cells and leading to their collapse.

Plants exposed to drought and high salinity are able to tolerate water loss from their cells, and Griffith thinks this ability could make them more cold tolerant as well.

"I think the amount of desiccation a cell can stand determines the lowest freezing temperature. If one plant dies at -10°C and another at -20°C, I think the difference is in the water that is lost from the cell," she explains.

This salt lick mustard is also closely related to canola, which typically brings in more money than any other Canadian crop. The last few years canola crops have been hit hard by drought on the Prairies and early frosts, so knowing which genes help plants withstand these stresses could be very valuable for developing hardier strains of canola.

Salt lick mustard grows in a few isolated places in Canada, but the Ontario research program is relying on Yukon seeds for its work. Bruce Bennett, a biologist who works with the Yukon's wildlife-viewing program, has been sending seeds to the group for the last two years.

The plants growing here in the wild look very different from the ones growing back in the laboratory, and that's why the researchers came north for a closer look. They want to figure out how the plants have adapted to the tough Yukon growing conditions, and try to duplicate those conditions in the laboratory.

Using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, Guevara has been analyzing the plants to determine which chemical compounds are present in the leaves. He wants to identify the compounds that may reduce water loss, and compare plants growing under ideal conditions with those growing under stressful conditions.

"The idea is that plants under stress accumulate certain compounds to alleviate stress, so we're just trying to determine the compounds," he explains.

If the researchers are successful, then hardy plants could be selected for seed production, helping to develop crops more tolerant of drought, salt and cold. Griffith says that canola is not the only crop which could benefit from this research.

"Most of the vegetables for North America are grown in California and the water there is becoming more and more saline because of irrigation, so if you can increase the salinity tolerance you can increase yields," she says.