At the heart of plant productivity is the balance of carbon assimilation through photosynthetic activity. Though central metabolism is context specific and changes with conditions, we will present recent insights with isotopic tracers, metabolite measurements and metabolic flux analyses that describe the dynamics of central carbon metabolism resulting in altered balance between resource assimilation and allocation.

A major goal for food and agricultural research is to increase the resiliency of agricultural systems to adapt to rapid changes and extreme conditions. Prof. Ronald will describe how genetic approaches are being used to generate the next generation of crops that will help farmers thrive in these challenging conditions.

The quantitative genetics of photosynthesis efficiency in plants is not much investigated, even though breeding for photosynthesis would be interesting to maintain or improve annual increases in crop yields.