Scientists Have Improved Crop Photosynthesis By 40% And Hopefully It'll Reduce Farmer Suicides

Photosynthesis is something you learn about in school, how plants use carbon dioxide from the air with energy from sunlight to create sugar molecules. Well, one scientist has been looking for a way to co-opt that process, and she may have just succeeded.

Don Ort (left), Paul South (center) and Amanda Cavanagh (right) - Images courtesy: Claire Benjamin/RIPE Project

Amanda Cavanagh is a biologist and post-doctoral researcher at the University of Illinois and she's been studying a plant protein called Rubisco. This protein is present in abundance as large molecules in leaves. "It's probably the most abundant protein in the world," she told NPR.

But Rubisco is so important because it's responsible for gathering carbon dioxide from the air to use in photosynthesis. The problem is it's not exactly the most efficient, and tends to also pick up oxygen. When that happens, a toxic compound is formed in the plant which has to be eliminated, a process that uses far too much energy. As a result, photosynthesis isn't very energy efficient.

Also Read: Rising CO2 Pollution Isn't Just Warming The Planet, It's Making Our Crops Less Nutritious

Cavanagh and her colleagues then have been working on a program called Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) at the University of Illinois. Over the last five years, they've been trying to "fix" Rubisco and thereby photosynthesis.

We could feed 200 million more ppl/year with calories lost to photorespiration in the Midwest alone! Super proud to share our work today showing we can engineer a more efficient pathway, and increase crop growth by 40% https://t.co/NUtDinWBZ7
kudos to lead author: @PaulFSouth pic.twitter.com/k6lSrz9QA9

¡ª Amanda Cavanagh (@cavycavs) January 3, 2019

They're experiments with tobacco plants showed that altered genes implanted into them shut down the existing detox system and set up a more efficient one. Because there was now so much energy to spare, these plants became super tobacco plants, growing faster and up to 40 percent bigger. And it didn't matter either if they were grown in insulated greenhouses or in open-air plots.

Also Read: This Startup Built An AI-Based Grain Analyser That Will Tell Farmers Exact Quality Of The Crop

Of course, tobacco was just the test plant because it's easy to work with. Cavanagh and her colleagues instead are now trying to apply the procedure to other food crops like tomatoes and soybeans. Basically, by tweaking the natural photosynthesis process, they can develop plants that produce much more food than we're accustomed to today.

Claire Benjamin/RIPE Project

It shows so much promise that both the US Department of Agriculture and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are funding the research, and plants successfully produced this way might be introduced into regular crop circulations.

That's still many years down the line obviously, and it remains to be seen if the tweaked protein just produces bigger leafier plants or actually improves food output from the crops as well

But if that works, it could go a long way towards reducing the food crisis in developing countries. Closer to home, it can also help farmers gain an actual profit from their work, as opposed to sinking further into debt each year. Just recently, thousands of farmers marched on parliament in New Delhi to demand the government's attention on the agrarian crisis.

Also Read: Helpless Farmers Do Simple Calculation To Make Us Understand Why They Are Protesting

It's important they obtain higher selling prices, because it'll likely become more expensive for them to obtain gene-improved crops like this in the first place. And without farmers having an incentive to stick to the profession, our entire country could starve.