Engineering crops to photosynthesise better just got one step closer to reality

By Taylor Szyszka, Postdoctoral Research Associate in Synthetic Biology, University of Sydney
Davin Saviro Wijaya, PhD Candidate, Research School of Biology, Australian National University
Yu Heng Lau, Associate Professor in Chemical Biology, University of Sydney

As Earth’s population grows, we will need more food. According to one estimate, we may need to nearly double our crop yields in the next century to keep up.

At the same time, climate change and wild weather events are making it harder than ever to grow food. We are faced with a complex problem, but one thing is certain: we will need to grow better, more productive crops.

Crops have already gone through aeons of evolution and millennia of human selection, so improving their growth even…

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