How CRISPR rice could help tackle climate change

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Is it possible to create new crops that will fight climate change? A group of researchers are hoping to get $11 million in funding. The funds will be used to improve plants and soil so that they can trap carbon dioxide. The effort was announced last week and is being led by the Innovative Genomics Institute.

Climate is a big problem in the world and we saw eye to eye on it with one another. Brad Ringeisen says that they didn't want to sit on the sideline anymore.

Climate experts agree that the only way to tackle climate change is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we send into the air as we burn fossil fuels. We need to find ways to clean up some of the pollution that has already been dumped in the atmosphere so that we don't have to worry about climate change. Plants are one way to achieve that. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that plants take in. Carbon is transferred into the soil.

It is possible to make precise changes in a plant's genome. IGI has a mission to remove carbon from the air. Plants are better at capturing CO2 if they are more efficient in their photosynthesis. IGI wants to develop crops with long roots. Plants transfer carbon into the soil through their roots. Longer roots can deposit carbon deeper into the soil so that it isn't easy to release into the atmosphere again. The Bezos Earth Fund gave $30 million to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, which is trying to influence plants and develop crops with more robust roots.

The third arm of IGI's research is boosting the soil's capacity to store. Carbon doesn't usually hold onto soil for very long. It escapes back into the atmosphere through the work of soil microbes. Techniques like tilling allow soil to lose more of its carbon. A product that could be added to the dirt to nurture a soil microbiome that holds onto carbon longer is one of the possible outcomes of IGI's research.

These are some heavy lifts that are not done yet. Ringeisen expects the real world impact to be seven to 10 years after the research is finished. Scaling up to have a meaningful impact on the climate will be a huge challenge even if they are successful at genetically engineering plants.

According to César Terrer, an assistant professor at MIT who leads a lab focused on plant-soil, plants are already efficient carbon fixing machines.

Terrer is not involved in the project, but he was a fellow at one of the institutions involved. He cautions that focusing on ways to engineer nature to help us with climate change can distract us from the need to cut greenhouse gas pollution.

Much of the carbon footprint of agriculture comes from livestock andfertilizer. Rice paddies are an ideal place for methane- producing microbes. IGI is looking at changing the roots of the soil again.

Ringeisen said that the rice genome is easier to manipulate than other crops because it is well understood. One of the scientists involved in IGI's initiative is Pamela Ronald, whose research has led to the development of rice varieties that tolerate flooding for much longer than other types using a different type of genetic engineering. According to Ronald's laboratory at the University of California, Davis, there are more than 6 million farmers in India and Bangladesh who grow that rice.

IGI won't stop working with food. According to Ringeisen, Sorghum is a candidate for gene editing. He hopes that any new varieties they develop will bring with them more incentives for farmers, like more abundant harvests that result from more efficient photosynthesis. It is a few years away. IGI hopes to begin international field trials with farmers after their research is done.