C2 photosynthesis: a promising route toward food security

There is an urgent need to achieve step changes in crop photosynthetic efficiency to meet food security and nutrition requirements.

The most important direct sources of global human calories (i.e., rice and wheat) use the C3 form of photosynthesis, such that any improvement to the C3 photosynthesis system would have far reaching benefits in feeding a growing human population.

To reduce the negative effects of photorespiration on C3 crop productivity, scientists are looking to engineer more efficient modes of photosynthesis into C3 crops. C2 is one such mode of efficient photosynthesis that evolved repeatedly across diverse plant lineages.

This simple CO2 concentrating mechanism captures, concentrates, and re-assimilates CO2 released by photorespiration to improve re-assimilation of photorespired CO2 and partially suppress photorespiration.

Dr Marjorie Lundgren will share her plans to engineer C2 photosynthesis into C3 crops and discuss its potential to effectively boost photosynthesis under different environments.