Only two plants grow wild in Antarctica. Not surprisingly, they’ve learned a lot about frost tolerance, and it’s something Australia’s wheat industry thinks that it can learn too.

An Australian biotech team has isolated the gene that lets the Antarctic hair grass keep growing through temperatures down to -22’ C, said Ian Edwards, professor at the University of Western Australia. Now, they’ve transferred that gene to a laboratory plant called Arabidopsis, and soon hope to transfer it to wheat.

With that gene, when an ice crystal starts to form within a cell, Edwards said the plant builds a kind of jail cell around it, preventing it from getting big enough to rupture cell tissues.

The traits is still several years from commercialization, but Edwards estimated it would save $200 million a year for Australia’s wheat growers, who plant spring wheat during the continent’s winter months, making it vulnerable to frost damage during flowering and early grain fill.