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Tuning up crop photosynthesis

Nature Biotechnology volume 17, pages 22–23 (1999)Cite this article

There is a significant class of underachievers in the plant kingdom. Plants that possess the so–called C3 photosynthetic pathway tend to use CO2 much less efficiently than their C4 counterparts. Unfortunately for agriculture, many important crops are of the former type, which means that they do not always fix carbon very efficiently. In this issue, Ku et al.1 make a significant advance in the technology for transferring foreign genes for the C4 pathway into rice, a C 3 crop plant in the interest of improving their photosynthetic efficiency. Their paper suggests a potential future approach for improving the yield of C3 crop.

Approximately three decades ago, it was discovered that certain terrestrial plants possess a photosynthetic pathway in which the C4 dicarboxylic acids (oxaloacetate, malate, and aspartate) are initial products of fixation of atmospheric carbon dioxide2,3. This differs from the classic photosynthetic mechanism discovered in the 1940s by Melvin Calvin and colleagues, where the first product of CO2 assimilation is the C3 acid phosphoglycerate via ribulose 1,5–bisphosphate carboxylase (Rubisco).

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  1. professor, Department of Botany Washington State University, Pullman, 99164–4238, WA

    Gerry Edwards

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  1. Gerry Edwards
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Edwards, G. Tuning up crop photosynthesis. Nat Biotechnol 17, 22–23 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/5192

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