From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Philip Bratby

Who would have thought!

Global demand for food may rise by 60% mid-century. A central challenge is to meet this need using less land in a changing climate. Nearly all crop carbon is assimilated through Rubisco, which is catalytically slow, reactive with oxygen, and a major component of leaf nitrogen. Developing more efficient forms of Rubisco, or engineering CO₂ concentrating mechanisms into C₃ crops to competitively repress oxygenation, are major endeavors, which could hugely increase photosynthetic productivity (≥ 60%). New technologies are bringing this closer, but improvements remain in the discovery phase and have not been reduced to practice. A simpler shorter-term strategy that could fill this time gap, but with smaller productivity increases (c. 10%) is to increase leaf Rubisco content. This has been demonstrated in initial field trials, improving the productivity of C₃ and C₄ crops. Combining three-dimensional leaf canopies with metabolic models infers that a 20% increase in Rubisco increases canopy photosynthesis by 14% in sugarcane (C₄) and 9% in soybean (C₃). This is consistent with observed productivity increases in rice, maize, sorghum and sugarcane. Upregulation of Rubisco is calculated not to require more nitrogen per unit yield and although achieved transgenically to date, might be achieved using gene editing to produce transgene-free gain of function mutations or using breeding.

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/nph.20298

All a bit arcane!

But this is what it really means in English, as revealed by New Scientist:

A simple change to maize, sorghum and sugarcane that allows them to take advantage of rising CO₂ levels can boost their growth by around a fifth.

The growth of maize, sugarcane and sorghum has been greatly boosted by modifying the plants to take advantage of higher carbon dioxide levels now found in the air.

This was done by simply increasing the activity of two genes, says Coralie Salesse-Smith at the University of Illinois. The finding should lead to the creation of new varieties whose yields go up as CO₂ levels continue to rise.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2460964-genetic-tweak-to-three-key-crops-massively-boosts-their-growth

Thank you Coralie and your colleagues.

You are doing what proper scientists have always done in the past, and should be doing now. Contributing to the knowledge of how the world works, and finding ways to make all of our lives better.

You shame the bunch of charlatans and cowboys, who hide behind their fake computer models and tell us we are destroying the planet.

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