Scientists engineer shortcut for photosynthetic glitch, boost crop growth by 40 percent

[Jim__]

From phys.org:

Four unmodified plants (left) grow beside four plants (right) engineered with alternate routes to bypass photorespiration -- an energy-expensive process that costs yield potential. The modified plants are able to reinvest their energy and resources to boost productivity by 40 percent. Credit: Claire Benjamin/RIPE Project

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Plants convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis; however, most crops on the planet are plagued by a photosynthetic glitch, and to deal with it, evolved an energy-expensive process called photorespiration that drastically suppresses their yield potential. Researchers from the University of Illinois and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service report in the journal Science that crops engineered with a photorespiratory shortcut are 40 percent more productive in real-world agronomic conditions.

"We could feed up to 200 million additional people with the calories lost to photorespiration in the Midwestern U.S. each year," said principal investigator Donald Ort, the Robert Emerson Professor of Plant Science and Crop Sciences at Illinois' Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. "Reclaiming even a portion of these calories across the world would go a long way to meeting the 21st Century's rapidly expanding food demands—driven by population growth and more affluent high-calorie diets."

...

Photosynthesis uses the enzyme Rubisco—the planet's most abundant protein—and sunlight energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugars that fuel plant growth and yield. Over millennia, Rubisco has become a victim of its own success, creating an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Unable to reliably distinguish between the two molecules, Rubisco grabs oxygen instead of carbon dioxide about 20 percent of the time, resulting in a plant-toxic compound that must be recycled through the process of photorespiration.

more ...

[Igel]

2. As long as they're tasty

or can be used in ethanol production, bring'em on.

It's not the 1950s any more.

[progressoid]

3. This is wonderful. Too bad we can't use it.

Everybody knows that GMOs cause obesity, ADHD and autism.





.


.


.







Just kidding. I think this is great.