by AMINA KHAN
Scientists have improved how quickly a plant responds to changes in available light, improving photosynthetic efficiency by about 15%, a new study shows PHOTO/Julie McMahon
A little extra light goes a long way. By fixing a glitch in plants’ ability to use sunlight to make sugar, scientists have managed to improve the efficiency of photosynthesis by about 15% — an upgrade that could be used to raise agricultural crop yields.
The findings, described in the journal Science, could help researchers find ways to feed Earth’s ever-growing human population.
“That’s pretty amazing … if this could be put into all of our food and feed and fuel crops, then it would solve certainly a decade or more’s worth of our need for these agricultural products,” said Sabeeha Merchant, a biochemist at UCLA who was not involved in the study.
Today’s grains and other crops look very different than the ones ancient humans first began to cultivate. Take the ancestor to modern corn, which featured tiny cobs with just a few kernels that were covered in tough shells. But several millennia of breeding, in which farmers selected for their preferred traits, resulted in the large cobs filled with hundreds of soft, sweet kernels — making it a much more calorie-dense and easily accessible food.
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