Boost for food crisis research

Plant scientists at the Research School of Biology (RSB), part of the ANU College of Medicine, Biology & Environment, have been awarded up to $7 million to add their scientific expertise to a new Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant. The five-year project aims to enhance photosynthetic efficiency in crop plants to tackle the looming global food crisis. It is led by the University of Illinois, and will see RSB researchers working alongside the Universities of Essex, California Berkeley, Louisiana State, Shanghai and Rothamsted Research. The international team will take a seven-pronged approach to overcoming the limitations of photosynthetic mechanisms in C3 plants, which make up the majority of crop plants on Earth. In C3 photosynthesis, an enzyme called Rubisco sits in the plant's chloroplast cells, converting sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO₂) into sugars to fuel growth. Rubisco has long been known to be inefficient, requiring a higher concentration of CO₂ than is available in the air. However, simple plants, such as algae and cyanobacteria, have overcome Rubisco's inefficiencies by concentrating CO₂ in their photosynthetic cells.