The person is Michael Le Page.
There are plants in the trial.
Haley Ahlers is a part of theRIPE project.
The yields of unmodified crops in field trials have been smaller than those of genetically modified ones, but with no added fertiliser. Increasing the incomes of farmers in low-income countries is one of the benefits of growing upgraded crops.
Stephen Long thinks it will work in most crops. cowpea and rice are being worked on.
This is the first time that it has been done in a food plant in a field trial.
The work is the result of a global collaboration set up 10 years ago that aims to boost yields by improving photosynthesis and to make these upgraded crops available to small farmers in Africa. A number of approaches are being explored and combined to produce larger yield increases.
We think we could get a big boost. It would be the Green Revolution level. Major yield improvements achieved in the 1950s and 1960s are referred to as the Green Revolution.
The genetically modified soybeans have higher yields because they adapt better to different environments. Light energy is absorbed by a leaf when it's in full sunshine. If cells don't turn on a mechanism known as quenching, they will be damaged.
quenching needs to be turned off when a leaf is shaded. Crop plants lose a lot of energy when they turn on and off.
It isn't certain why this is, but it could be because the wild ancestors of many crops grew in semi-arid conditions As the sun moves through the sky, leaves with shadows of other leaves move over them.
Ferns do turn on or off quickly. Extra copies of three genes that are involved in the quenching process have been added by his team.
Although we don't fertilise our crops, theProtein content was unchanged Soyal is the main plant source of nutrition.
The study is very exciting according to Emma Kovak.
She said that agriculture is responsible for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
In the US alone, a 15 per cent yield increase in soybeans would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
According to Christine Raines at the University of Essex in the UK, a major effort is needed to improve crops because the annual yield gains for our major crops have stopped.
Raines says that we need to increase yield in a sustainable way without using additional nitrogen.
It is not possible for most other crops to make their own nitrogen fertiliser in the way that soya and cowpea can, and so may need extra fertiliser to take advantage of the benefits of photosynthesis. Adding the ability to fix nitrogen to other crops would have a huge environmental benefit.
The journal's title is "science."
There are more on this topic.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
