An international research team has found they can increase corn productivity by targeting the enzyme in charge of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere.
Scientists at ANU have engineered tiny carbon-capturing engines from blue-green algae into plants, in a breakthrough that promises to help boost the yields of important food crops such as wheat, cowpeas and cassava.
The ANU and CSIRO will set up a new farming innovation centre at ANU to advance research, education and technology in farming and global food production, thanks to more than $1 million in new funding commitments.
Simon Williams uses protein biochemistry and structural biology approaches to understand how plant pathogens cause disease and how the plant immune system prevents infection.
C4 photosynthesis, a carbon concentrating mechanism, evolved as an adaptation to improve photosynthetic CO2 assimilation in terrestrial plants under conditions of low CO2, increased temperatures and varying rainfall patterns.
Devastating fungal diseases threaten global food security and plant and animal populations, highlighting the need for rapid and accurate identification of fungal pathogens.
I have developed a novel E.coli based directed evolution system to evolve Ribulose-1,5 -bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco), the rate-limiting enzyme in the Calvin Cycle of photosynthetic organisms.
Accurate estimation of gas exchange parameters has always been a fundamental aim of plant physiologists; from the more general assumptions and calculations presented by Moss and Rawlins (1963) up to the widely used model introduced by von Caemmerer and Farquhar (1981).