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Unless we increase the world’s capacity to grow food, the demand for food will outstrip supply in the next few decades. But we can’t meet our needs by simply clearing more land for agriculture—important ecosystems would be damaged and the emission of greenhouse gases would be accelerated.<
To meet this challenge, an international group of scientists has proposed an unusual solution: re-designing photosynthesis, the fundamental biological process by which plants use sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into something that we can eat. The group of scientists — led by Donald Ort, a plant biologist at the University of Illinois and a research leader at the United States Department of Agriculture — has just published a proposal that lays out several ambitious ideas on how to improve photosynthesis in crop plants. Despite being one of nature’s most fundamental and widespread biological processes, photosynthesis is not especially efficient in crop plants.
The researchers point to several aspects of photosynthesis that could be improved. For example, photosynthesis is not efficient in full sunlight, because crop plants absorb more light than they can use, they waste energy dealing with its harmful byproducts. Another inefficiency is caused by the increased levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere: too much slows down photosynthesis. Other organisms have evaded some of these inefficiencies. The simplest way to re-design photosynthesis in crop plants is to swap in more efficient components from these other photosynthesizing organisms, like algae and certain bacteria.<
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To solve the world’s looming food shortage in a way that’s environmentally sustainable, we need crops that yield more. This requires more investment in the necessary research, but also a critical mechanism that we currently lack: a modernized regulatory process for evaluating GMO crops that is both scientifically sound and publicly transparent.
Read full, original post: Redesigning Crops for the 21st Century
