{"id":7154,"date":"2017-08-18T09:22:44","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T09:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sustainableagriculturewaitrose.org\/?p=7154"},"modified":"2017-08-18T09:22:44","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T09:22:44","slug":"photosynthesis-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/2017\/08\/18\/photosynthesis-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"Photosynthesis breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"Researchers have increased plant productivity by boosting levels of three proteins involved in photosynthesis, offering hope for improving food crops<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

In field trials, the scientists saw 14\u201320% increases in the productivity of their modified tobacco plants, according to the new study published in the journal Science<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Many years of computational analysis and laboratory and field experiments led to the selection of the proteins targeted in the study led by Professor\u00a0Stephen Long<\/a>\u00a0 of the University of Illinois<\/a>\u00a0(USA) and Lancaster University<\/a>\u00a0(UK).<\/p>\n

The researchers used tobacco because it is easily modified. Now they are focusing on food crops.<\/p>\n

They hope eventually the discovery could help address global food shortage.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know for certain this approach will work in other crops, but because we\u2019re targeting a universal process that is the same in all crops, we\u2019re pretty sure it will,\u201d said Professor\u00a0Stephen Long<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Professor of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences said: \u201cCrop leaves exposed to full sunlight absorb more light than they can use. If they can\u2019t get rid of this excess energy, it will actually bleach the leaf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Plants protect themselves by making changes within the leaf that dissipate the excess energy as heat. This process is called \u2018nonphotochemical quenching\u2019 or NPQ.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut when a cloud crosses the sun, or a leaf goes into the shade of another, it can take up to half an hour for that NPQ process to relax,\u201d said Professor Long. \u201cIn the shade, the lack of light limits photosynthesis, and NPQ is also wasting light as heat.\u201d<\/p>\n

The research team used a supercomputer to predict how much the slow recovery from NPQ reduces crop productivity over the course of a day.<\/p>\n

These calculations revealed\u00a0 surprisingly high losses\u00a0 of 7.5\u201330%, depending on the plant type and prevailing temperature.<\/p>\n

Professor Long\u2019s discussions with University of California, Berkeley<\/a> researcher and study co-author Krishna Niyogi<\/a> \u2013 an expert on the molecular processes underlying NPQ \u2013suggested that boosting levels of three proteins might speed up the recovery process.<\/p>\n

To test this concept, the team inserted a \u201ccassette\u201d of the three genes (taken from the model plant\u00a0Arabidopsis)<\/em>\u00a0into tobacco.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe objective was simply to boost the level of three proteins already present in tobacco,\u201d said Professor Long.<\/p>\n

The researchers grew seedlings from multiple experiments, then tested how quickly the engineered plants responded to changes in available light.<\/p>\n

A fluorescence imaging technique allowed the team to determine which of the transformed plants recovered more quickly upon transfer to shade. The researchers selected the three best performers and tested them in several field plots alongside plots of the unchanged tobacco.<\/p>\n

Two of the modified plant lines consistently showed 20 percent higher productivity, and the third was 14 percent higher than the unaltered tobacco plants.<\/p>\n

Postdoctoral researchers\u00a0Katarzyna Glowacka<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Johannes Kromdijk<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0also worked on the study.<\/p>\n

\u201cTobacco is grown for its leaves, which were substantially increased,\u201d Johannes Kromdijk said. \u201cBut in food crops, it will be whatever we eat from the plant \u2013 the fruit, the seeds or the roots \u2013 that we will need to increase.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other experiments have demonstrated that increasing photosynthesis by exposing plants to high carbon dioxide results in more seed in wheat, soy and rice, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we can do this genetically, and we are actively working on repeating our work in various food crops,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The new results are a proof-of-concept that photosynthesis can be made more efficient, and that this does result in more crop productivity \u2013 something the scientific community once doubted, said Katarzyna Glowacka .<\/p>\n

\u201cThis finding offers some rare good news at a time of dire forecasts of future food shortages,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe United Nations predicts that by 2050, we\u2019re going to need to produce about 70% more food on the land we\u2019re currently using,\u201d said Professor Long. \u201cMy attitude is that it is very important to have these new technologies on the shelf now because it can take 20 years before such inventions can reach farmer\u2019s fields. If we don\u2019t do it now, we won\u2019t have this solution when we need it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation<\/a> funded this research, with the stipulation that any new agricultural products that result from the work be licensed in such a way that the technology is freely available to farmers in poor countries of Africa and South Asia.<\/p>\n

This work was conducted as part of the\u00a0Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency<\/a>\u00a0program at the\u00a0Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology<\/a>\u00a0at Illinois.<\/p>\n

Read the paper in Science: Improving photosynthesis and crop productivity by accelerating recovery from photoprotection<\/a>\u00a0(Open Access).<\/p>\n

Article source: Lancaster University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Image credit: \u00a9 Public domain\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers have increased plant productivity by boosting levels of three proteins involved in photosynthesis, offering hope for improving food crops In field trials, the scientists saw 14\u201320% increases in the productivity of their modified tobacco plants, according to the new study published in the journal Science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":381,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[81,112,283,286,486,638,658,671,679,691,818,877,896,926,974,1034,1086,1150,1185,1196],"class_list":["post-7154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-arabidopsis","tag-berkeley","tag-crop-production","tag-crop-science","tag-gates-foundation","tag-johannes-kromdijk","tag-katarzyna-glowacka","tag-krishna-niyogi","tag-lancaster-university","tag-leaves","tag-npq","tag-photosynthesis","tag-plant-science","tag-productivity","tag-research","tag-science","tag-stephen-long","tag-tobacco","tag-university-of-california-berkeley","tag-university-of-illinois"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/381"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/wp.lancs.ac.uk\/sustainable-agriculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}