As extreme droughts become more common in Australia, the grains and vegetables we take for granted will struggle to adapt. But scientists believe they have cracked the code and created a process to genetically modify crops to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, reducing the need for irrigation and fertilizer.
Modeling suggests that by modifying plants, their biomass can be increased from 2 percent to a whopping 50 percent. And this can also lead to higher yields, higher incomes for farmers, and lower prices in supermarkets.
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Dr Ben Long from the University of Newcastle has been researching this concept with colleagues at the Australian National University for 15 years.
His team's experiments begin by extracting a single element from blue-green algae, which gives it a superior ability to extract and process carbon dioxide (CO2). This process is highly effective and accounts for about 13 percent of all carbon dioxide captured in the atmosphere each year.
The next step in the plan is to incorporate the enzyme into crops such as rice, wheat and soybeans.
Some engineering was done on poplar wood with similar results. This system showed a 30 to 50 percent increase in small plant growth.Dr. Ben Long
Why haven't crops evolved to handle CO2 better?
The gene was extracted from a type of algae called cyanobium, which was first collected from US ocean tidal flats in the 1970s. As the availability of carbon dioxide changes in that environment, they adapted to the problem by evolving enrichment mechanisms.
Plants like wheat used for pasta could be genetically modified to produce higher yields. Source: Getty (File image)
“For our purposes as agricultural biologists, we want to be able to convert all the CO2 that plants capture into food that we eat,” Long explained.
“But plants haven't really evolved to maximize CO2 capture in the way we would like them to. If they can produce seeds for the next generation, that's their reason for being. But we want them to produce as much food as possible.”
Can this genetic technology reduce carbon from the environment?
Scientists are focused on increasing crop yields and are experimenting with tobacco, which is easier to genetically modify. But they also think it could be used to trap and store carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere.
“We think it is possible to introduce this kind of technology to tree species. This should allow us to capture CO2 more quickly and deposit the captured carbon into the wood.” said Long. “It could be deposited in wood and used in construction.”
The study was published in the journal Science Advances.
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