Crop Yield based on plant's stress levels

This article found in Science Daily is based on Stephen Howell's research on understanding the internal effects of stress on crops.  Stephen Howell is the former director of the Plant Science Institute, as well as a professor of genetics and cell biology.  The goal of his research is to find a way of keeping crop yields high even under stressful conditions such as drought, heat, and floods.  The effects of stress on plants is that it causes proteins to be poorly folded or not folded at all into their complete 3 dimensional shape.  This causes the ER to alert the cell. The protein IRE1 answers this alert by cutting and splicing an important RNA molecule to change its sequence.  In response to the new sequence, stress response genes are activated to provide defensive measures to increase the plants chance of survival, which usually involves inhibiting plant growth to conserve energy.  As Howell understands each step in this process, his objective is to prevent the ER from alerting the cell in hopes that the plant is productive even under stressful conditions. 

This research is interesting, makes me wish that we were this close to treating stress in humans.  However, the alert that the ER sends through the cell is a defense mechanism, and if this "alarm" is silenced my concern is that this will effect the health and quality of the plant.  I would be less concerned if the research was trying to make the crops more resistant to environmental stresses as opposed to making crops that simply just ignore the stresses.