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Climate Change, Photosynthesis and Advanced Biofuels pp 143–157Cite as

Strategies to Enhance Photosynthesis for the Improvement of Crop Yields

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Abstract

The impact of climate change and the rising demand for food, feed, and biofuels requires an increase in crop productivity without the use of additional land, water, or agrochemicals. Despite recent progress in plant breeding and biotechnology, improving crop productivity beyond existing yield potentials remains one of the greatest challenges in agricultural research. Photosynthesis is a critical process that underlies plant growth and agronomic performance, so the improvement of photosynthetic efficiency is necessary to achieve higher crop yields. Several biotechnological approaches have been proposed to increase the rate of photosynthesis in important C3 crops, including the engineering of RuBisCO, enhancing the activity of Calvin cycle enzymes, introducing CO2-concentration mechanisms and manipulating photorespiration. However, few of these strategies have led to significantly higher crop yields in practice. In this review, we will briefly discuss the limitations of photosynthesis in C3 plants before focusing on current strategies to overcome the bottlenecks and achieve higher agricultural productivity. Finally, we consider the remaining challenges and perspectives for the future development of novel strategies to enhance the efficiency of photosynthesis.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Wolfgang Koch and Dr. Markus Niessen (KWS Saat, Einbeck, Germany) for the design and management of semi-field studies. We thank Dr. Richard M. Twyman for manuscript editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME, Aachen, Germany

    Greta Nölke & Stefan Schillberg

  2. Institute for Phytopathology, Justus-Liebig University Giessen, Giessen, Germany

    Stefan Schillberg

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  1. Greta Nölke
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  2. Stefan Schillberg
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Correspondence to Stefan Schillberg .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Botany and P.G. School of Biotechnology, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Ashwani Kumar

  2. Department of Natural Sciences, Northeastern State University, Broken Arrow, OK, USA

    Yuan-Yeu Yau

  3. Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, Department of Life Sciences, Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Syoubara, Hiroshima, Japan

    Shinjiro Ogita

  4. Faculty of Biology and Chemistry, Plant Physiology, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Niedersachsen, Germany

    Renate Scheibe

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Nölke, G., Schillberg, S. (2020). Strategies to Enhance Photosynthesis for the Improvement of Crop Yields. In: Kumar, A., Yau, YY., Ogita, S., Scheibe, R. (eds) Climate Change, Photosynthesis and Advanced Biofuels. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-5228-1_5

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