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Alternative Pathway To Photorespiration Protects Growth And Productivity At Elevated Temperatures In A Model Crop, Amanda P. Cavanagh, Paul F. South, Carl J. Bernacchi, Donald R. Ort

United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service / University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Faculty Publications

Adapting crops to warmer growing season temperatures is a major challenge in mitigating the impacts of climate change on crop production. Warming temperatures drive greater evaporative demand and can directly interfere with both reproductive and vegetative physiological processes. Most of the world’s crop species have C3 photosynthetic metabolism for which increasing temperature means higher rates of photorespiration, wherein the enzyme responsible for fixing CO2 fixes O2 instead followed by an energetically costly recycling pathway that spans several cell compartments. In C3 crops like wheat, rice and soybean, photorespiration translates into large yield losses that are predicted to increase as global …