Sustainably increase crop yield

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OUR mission

The EC-funded project GAIN4CROPS is developing novel disruptive technologies to overcome one of the main constraints on photosynthetic efficiency: photorespiration, a process that reduces CO2 assimilation efficiency, and thus biomass yield and agricultural productivity.

In 5-years our project aims improve the efficiency of the most common photosynthetic metabolism in plants, the C3 metabolism, by following a stepwise approach. We will validate our findings in a set of model organisms of increasing cellular and anatomical complexity before moving to our final target: the sunflower.

Nature-inspired

We aim to enhance C3 photosynthetic efficiency using a naturally occurring variation of photorespiratory metabolism, in particular C3-C4 intermediate photosynthesis.

Stepwise approach

We further develop new-to-nature metabolic pathways by employing innovative plant breeding techniques with the purpose of minimise the photorespiratory losses & avoid any detrimental release of CO2.

Multidisciplinary team

Our team of 14 partners brings together a wide array of expertise: computational and system biology, plant breeding, metabolic modeling, plant ecophysiology, moss biology and many others.

Learn more about us

The project in numbers

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A deeper view to our step-wise approach

Model organisms: from bacteria to sunflower

A multidisciplinary team

Disciplines
Sequencing, Comparative Genomics & Systems Biology
Innovative plant breeding
Enzymology
Microbiology (microalgae & cyanobacteria)
Plant ecophysiology & moss biology
"Our multidisciplinary consortium gathers a heterogeneous array of expertise and pulls together cutting-edge research with field experience."
Andreas Weber
Project Coordinator

Our partners

The science behind the project

The majority of plants (85%), including rice, wheat, soybeans and all trees, are C3 plants, which have no special features to combat photorespiration. They only use the Calvin Benson cycle for fixing the CO2 from the atmosphere. They have the disadvantage that in warm and dry conditions their photosynthetic efficiency suffers because of photorespiration.

C4 plants minimize photorespiration by separating initial CO2 fixation and the Calvin cycle in space, performing these steps in different cell types. This solution implies that the leaf anatomy is organized in specific cell compartments: the light-dependent reactions occur in the mesophyll cells (spongy tissue in the middle of the leaf) while the Calvin cycle occurs in special cells around the leaf veins, called bundle-sheath cells. In the latter, thanks to the active transfer of CO2, the environment has 10-120x more CO2 available, thus reducing RuBisCO’s activity on oxygen and the resulting photorespiration.

The C4 pathway is used in about 3%, percent of all vascular plants; some examples are crabgrass, sugarcane and corn. The drawback to C4 photosynthesis is the extra energy needed to transfer molecules back and forth from different cell types. C4 plants are common in habitats that are hot but are less abundant in areas that are cooler. In hot conditions, the benefits of reduced photorespiration likely exceed the associated costs.