Preparing crops for our changing Earth

The words Celebrating Earth Day with RIPE are in the middle, each side has a soybean stem with leaves

 

The main focus of RIPE is to improve the photosynthetic efficiency of crops important to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, but engineering crops that thrive in today’s environment won’t help the farmers of the future. We are working to develop plants that thrive in future environments affected by climate change. Higher temperatures, higher CO2 levels, and less water availability are all factors crops will have to deal with.

The articles below feature some of the work our researchers doing to improve the future of food on our changing planet.

 

The heat is on RIPE researchers show ability to future-proof crops for changing climate
The world is warming quickly with no indication of slowing down. This could be catastrophic for the production of food crops, particularly in already warm areas. RIPE researchers show that bypassing a photosynthetic glitch common to crops like soybean, rice, and wheat, can confer thermal protection under heat stress in the field. 

 

Not just CO2: Rising temperatures also alter photosynthesis in a changing climateAgricultural scientists who study climate change often focus on how increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will affect crop yields. But rising temperatures are likely to complicate the picture, researchers report in a new review of the topic. In the review, RIPE researchers explored how higher temperatures influence plant growth and viability despite the greater availability of atmospheric CO2, a key component of photosynthesis. Excessive heat can reduce the efficiency of enzymes that drive photosynthesis and can hinder plants’ ability to regulate CO2 uptake and water loss, the researchers write. Structural features can make plants more – or less – susceptible to heat stress. Ecosystem attributes – such as the size and density of plants, the arrangement of leaves on plants or local atmospheric conditions – also influence how heat will affect crop yields.

 

Researchers show potential for improved water-use efficiency in field-grown plants  Water deficit is currently one of the most significant limiting factors for global agricultural productivity, a factor further exacerbated by global climate change according to a 2019 water report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. As a result, researchers worldwide have been working to improve water-use efficiency in crops to better cope with water-scarce conditions. A RIPE team found that by overexpressing a sugar-sensing enzyme, called hexokinase, in field-grown tobacco plants, they could improve intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) without decreasing photosynthetic rates or biomass production.

 

Scientists further cowpea research—boosting canopy CO2 assimilation, water-use efficiency
Crops grow dense canopies that consist of several layers of leaves—the upper layers with younger sun leaves and the lower layers with older shaded leaves that may have difficulty intercepting sunlight trickling down from the top layers. RIPE scientists aimed to understand how much variation exists within diverse cowpea lines in light absorption and carbon dioxide (CO2) assimilation throughout the canopy. This information can ultimately be used to design more efficient canopies—with greater CO2 assimilation and water-use efficiency—to increase yields.

 

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Illinois research shows crops have drought ‘memory’ to help reduce yield loss
According to RIPE research, crops that experience drought conditions or extreme temperatures during their early stages of growth and survive are better able to deal with those same conditions later in their growth cycle. This ‘memory,’ or adaptation by the plant, could help reduce yield loss that year and help researchers prevent future yield loss.

 

The articles above are just a sample of RIPE’s work in this area, and others. For RIPE’s full publication library click here.