University of Illinois to improve crop yield through photosynthesis in a new global effort

Project aims to increase photosynthetic efficiency for sustainable yield increase

13-Dec-2012 - USA

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has received a five–year, $25-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the photosynthetic properties of key food crops, including rice and cassava. The project, titled "RIPE – Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency," has the potential to benefit farmers around the world by increasing productivity of staple food crops. Illinois research will take place at the Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB).

"This grant will be game changing," says Stephen Long, Project Director and Gutgsell Endowed Professor of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at Illinois. "This project represents a huge effort to determine and apply the mechanisms of photosynthesis that can contribute to the challenge of this century: food security for all."

Increasing photosynthetic efficiency has not yet been addressed by conventional breeding methods, though it has the potential to increase yields and reduce the use of water and nitrogen. Team members will apply recent advances in photosynthesis research and crop bioengineering to the RIPE project. In addition, computer simulation models of the highly complex photosynthetic system, combined with practical engineering, will identify the best targets for improving photosynthesis efficiency.

The University of Illinois will lead the study. The University is home to SoyFACE (Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment), an outdoor facility for growing crops under a variety of atmospheric climatic conditions that has shown strong evidence linking increased photosynthesis to consistently higher crop yields over the 10 years of its operation. Illinois is also home to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act PETROSS program, which is engineering improved photosynthesis into two key US bioenergy crops, sugarcane and sorghum.

Illinois will conduct the study through an international collaboration with other leading research institutions as sub-contractors of Illinois, which will initially include the Australian National University, Rothamsted Research (UK), University of Essex (UK), and USDA/ARS.

https://www.bionity.com/en/news/140849/university-of-illinois-to-improve-crop-yield-through-photosynthesis-in-a-new-global-effort.html