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A new Green Revolution: Photosynthesis
research and global food security
Prof Bob Furbank
Director ARC COETP
A grand challenge for Agriculture:
How do we feed 9 billion people?
“In the next 50 years we will have to produce more food than we have
consumed in the history of mankind”
Megan Clarke CEO CSIRO 2009
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A quantum improvement in crop breeding is
required
Wheat Yields
New Scientist June 2008
What was the “Green Revolution”?
Yield = Biomass X HI
Biomass = I Abs X RUE
Harvest index and grain number gains in cereal crops have been exhausted
Not enough photosynthetic “push”
For Biomass crops, same applies
Researchers are galvanised to improve
photosynthesis
Australia Takes the Lead in 2014
www.photosynthesis.org.au
G2P P2G
We will mine variation in
photosynthetic performance in both
C3 and C4 crops and model species for
germplasm and genes by:
• Phenotypic screening for variation in
photosynthetic traits
• Mining genome sequence for allelic
variation in candidate genes
•Deliver novel traits through
transgenic approaches and allele
mimics
Exploiting natural variation
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Rice is a staple crop for SE Asia
The contribution of rice to total global calorie intake
90% of rice
produced
here
.
Source: FAO and World Bank 2010
The 3,000 rice genomes project
Indica
(groups 1,2,3)
Indica
(group 4)
Aus
Admixed
Admixed
Aromatic
Temperate
89 Countries
Tropical
(groups 1,2)
Japonica
Smashing the bottleneck: The Phenomics
“Sieve”
What Sieve can we
Use on 1000 plants?
• Better light absorption?
• Better Rubisco efficency
Rice, wheat Sorghum
• Better Rubisco amount
Measuring Photosynthesis Biomass and Growth:
Tedious!
Quadrat cuts: >10 min per plot
Plus drying / weighing!
20 min per plant!
Breeding goes digital and high throughput!
Digital biomass
leaf angles!
Counting
grain
Deery, Jimenez-Berni, Sirault
Leaf reflectance as a rapid tool to screen for
photosynthetic diversity
20 Seconds
Per plant
Predictive powerValidation
of Hyperspectral
What do we do next?
Genomics
Breeding tools
GBS / Markers
Parents for crossing
Candidate genes /
validation
X
Varieties
Quantum advances: targeting photosynthesis genes
from other species
X
Synthetic Biology
= ?
C4 Plants “supercharge” Photosynthesis
C3
•Double photosynthesis in air
•Half N-use per C fixed
•Half water use per C fixed
•Harvestable biomass up to
5 fold higher than C3s
C4
10X CO2
No surprise they are the world’s worst weeds and most productive crops on the planet
Increasing photosynthesis increases yield
C4 maize produced 50% more than C3 rice
Maize C4
Yield = 13.9 t ha-1
Rice C3
Yield = 8.3 t ha-1
Can we Supercharge Rice?
Bill Gates Funds C4 Rice Consortium
16 labs
7 countries!
$25M US
“This is an Apollo Project: It’s like putting a man on the moon” Bill Gates
The Timeline for C4 Rice
It will likely take a minimum of 15 years of coordinated research carried out in the laboratories of
the C4 Rice Consortium to deliver C4 rice to plant breeders in the developing world.
Phase 1
Phase 2
Gene
discovery
and
molecular
toolbox
development
Characterize
regulatory
controls
Phase 3
Transform
rice to
express
Kranz
anatomy
and the C4
metabolic
enzymes
Phase 4
Optimize
C4 function
in
transgenic
rice
Breed C4
transgenics
into local
varieties
Currently have 6 maize
photosynthetic genes in a single
homozygous line and working.
Synthetic biology can mimic this
in 1 construct / transformation
C4 Engineering 50 Years on?
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“...in the future C4 photosynthesis will be regarded
as a trait like any other, segregating as one or two loci in a
breeding program and this trait will be used across
multiple crops, probably under an inducible promoter”
Prof Jane Langdale, Oxford University (2016)
C3
C4
Thank you
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