From Knowable Magazine, November 11:
How to make corn more like cactusIt’s an agricultural moonshot: Scientists hope to increase plant yields by hacking photosynthesis, the process that powers life on Earth
This past summer, a widespread drought across the United States lowered crop yields by as much as one-third as corn, wheat, barley and other plants suffered from too much heat and too little water. It’s a scenario that will likely become more common as climate change makes much of the world a hotter, drier place.
Scientists are trying to teach old crops some new tricks that will let them flourish in these harsher conditions — turning to secrets that reside in plants like pineapples, orchids and agaves. These and certain other plants have hacked photosynthesis in ways that allow them to thrive when it’s hot and dry, and even to withstand blistering periods of drought.
Many orchids, for example, live in nooks and crannies of trees where their only water comes in sporadic bouts of rain, while others, like agaves, thrive in the rocky soils of desert grasslands. If scientists could engineer crop plants like rice and wheat to be more like these heat-tolerant species, crops could be grown in lands that can’t be farmed right now. Under the right conditions, researchers say, some crop yields could increase by 50 percent or more.
The work is still years from being done, but it could be vital. Climate change is predicted to cause more droughts and make farmland less productive. At the same time, the number of people the world needs to feed will increase to 10 billion from 8 billion by the end of the century.
“It is getting more and more apparent that climate change is going to be a big challenge,” says Xiaohan Yang, a plant molecular biologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. “These plants are a natural solution to mitigate climate change.”
The trouble with photosynthesisTraditionally, crop improvements have come from targeting traits like the size of the plant, its resistance to pests or the length of its growing season. But in recent years, scientists have been targeting photosynthesis, the process by which plants grow that ultimately fuels almost all life on Earth.
Photosynthesis uses sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to make sugars and other molecules plants need. But in dry or hot environments, the dual requirements for water and carbon dioxide present a dilemma: To let carbon dioxide in, plants must keep open small pores on their leaves. But those same pores also let water vapor out. When it’s hot and dry, that can lead to deadly water loss, inefficient photosynthesis or both.*****Photosynthesis happens in two main stages, however, and that provides an opening for scientists to work with. In the first part of photosynthesis, called the “light reactions,” the plant captures photons from the sun. The main point of this stage is to create energy-storing molecules that will fuel reactions in the next step. It’s akin to filling up a tank of gasoline so you can be at the ready.The second stage of the process, the “dark reactions,” doesn’t require light. An enzyme called rubisco grabs carbon dioxide that has entered the leaf and attaches it to a molecule known as RuBP. The sunlight’s energy that was captured and stored earlier is used to fuel reactions that create a simple sugar from the carbon. The plant can use the sugars to make more complex molecules.
This version of photosynthesis is how 85 percent of all plants do things, including most trees and most major food crops — rice, wheat, soybeans and more. Such plants are referred to as C3 plants because they make a three-carbon molecule in one of the first steps of photosynthesis....
....MUCH MORE
But what about the nocturnal corn sweats?
Friday, July 22, 2016
Nocturnal Corn Sweats And the U.S. Heat Wave
Years ago I was corresponding with a reader in Kansas:
She responded...pps- Have you ever heard of Nocturnal Corn Sweats?On Jun 4, 2008, at 9:06 PM, Climateer wrote:
It's supposed to be one of the reasons for higher humidity.
98% sucks.
That's a technical term that all the best weather geeks use
nocturnal corn sweats!! no! never heard of them. I just fell of my chair I laughed so hard. Really? Seriously? I'm googling it to make sure you aren't pulling my leg.
Compared to last year, almost no one (along my drive into town, anyway) planted corn this year. which is good because it has been horribly, horribly wet at all the wrong times. lots of wheat though...Over the next couple years I got a bit obsessed:
Nocturnal Corn Sweat News!
6/11/10 Climateer wrote
If you Google "nocturnal corn sweat" (or sweats) it still comes back 'No Results Found'.
Damn it.
I shall make it my mission to bring the term into common usage,
From every village and hamlet to the great metropoli, when some says "NCS" it won't be the National Cartoonist Society they refer to.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression...
Good grief, I'm channeling MLK.
Here's the latest from Northern Illinois University via the Elgin Courier-News:... I even tried remembering high school biology. She asked:
8/4/10 Can soybeans get night sweats too? Was out two mornings around dawn and soybe...
8/4/10 Climateer wrote
...It's all about the pores.
Corn is one of the weird C4's, I've forgotten which group/subgroup soybeans are in.
And the CAM's, ah the CAM plants.
Nocturnal Bean Sweats...hmmmm
....and of course, MUCH MORE
