description
- Food security and climate change are two of the most important challenges facing modern society. Increased crop productivity is required to provide enough food for an ever-growing population, however, this should not come at a cost of increased carbon emissions. Novel plants variants that can use less land, capture more carbon, and produce higher yields are needed. Many research groups around the globe are working on improving photosynthesis to meet these challenges, which includes modifying enzymes and changing the anatomy of the leaf to capture more carbon. However, relatively few groups have focused on improving photosynthesis that occurs outside of the leaf, in stems, flowers and fruits. Many species heavily rely on non-leaf photosynthesis, however, there are many aspects of this process that we do not understand. This project aims to understand more about non-leaf photosynthesis: How has nature used it to improve plant health? How is it programmed on a genetic level? How can we manipulate it to benefit nature and society? We will focus our efforts initially on the mustard plant family because they contain 'model' plants as well as important crops, such as oilseed rape. Model plants are plants that are well-characterized (e.g. have a sequenced genome) and whose genome we can modify with ease. This is important because understanding how a complex process such as non-leaf photosynthesis functions requires the availability of tractable systems to test specific hypotheses. This power of this approach has been demonstrated recently with the development of plants with shatter-resistant fruits in oilseed rape, which reduces harvesting losses significantly. These plants were generated by directly using knowledge acquired from model plants. Here, we will employ a similar strategy. First, we will develop our understanding of non-leaf photosynthesis on genetic and physiological levels. Next, we will use this knowledge to make specific hypotheses on how to modify non-leaf photosynthesis to improve agriculturally important traits. We will test these hypotheses in both model and crop plants and develop improved varieties in a step-wise manner. Although we will initially investigate species in the mustard plant family, this work will also be relevant to species in other plant families including wheat, barley, and tomato, whose flowers and fruits also perform photosynthesis. Therefore, this project marks the beginning of a long-term goal to understand the evolution of non-leaf photosynthesis and to develop strategies to modify it in important crop plants.