University of Essex, School of Biological Sciences, Colchester, Essex CO3 4JE UK.
The primary determinant of crop yield is the cumulative rate of photosynthesis over the growing season which is the result of the crop’s ability to capture light, the efficiency by which this light is converted to biomass and how much biomass is converted into the usable product e.g. grain in the case of wheat and rice. Photosynthesis has never been used as a parameter to select for high yielding varieties and often the rate of photosynthesis per unit leaf area shows a negative correlation with yield. However, there is now compelling evidence from transgenic studies that the manipulation of targeted steps in the photosynthetic process has the potential to increase crop yield and maximise production. Furthermore, there is significant natural variation in photosynthetic performance within and between species, the exploitation of which to improve photosyntheis is largely unexplored. Given that the increasing world population is putting ever greater demands on agriculture to provide high yielding crop plants for food and fuel, it is essential that the potential of improving photosynthesis for yield increases is fully exploited. In this talk I will review the evidence to support this approach to increasing yield using synthetic biology based technology and will also explore the potential for exploitation of existing natural variation. Raines CA (2011) Plant Phys 155, 36–42; Lawson et al (2012) COB 23, 215–220 .