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Discover How We Can Feed the World by 2050
Illinois Ag Connection - 06/22/2017

People are invited to see the plants that could help feed and fuel the world by 2050 and meet the scientists who engineered them at the "2017 Food & Fuel Field Day" held on July 13 at the University of Illinois Energy Farm. This free, day-long event will be held rain or shine, with intimate round-table discussions, hands-on field tours and robot demonstrations, and one-on-one interviews; lunch, refreshments, and sunscreen will be provided.

We will need to produce 70% more food by 2050 to meet the needs of more than 9 billion people, according to a prediction by the Food and Agriculture Organization. Funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, RIPE (Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency) is an international research project that is developing plants that more efficiently turn the sun's energy into food to sustainably increase worldwide food productivity, particularly for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.

"We're working on solutions today to ensure our food security in 30 years," said RIPE Associate Director Donald Ort of the USDA/ARS Photosynthesis Research Unit and Robert Emerson Professor in Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois. "As it takes 20 years for these solutions to get from the lab to farmers' hands, we don't have any time to spare. Luckily we already have promising solutions that we are now testing in our fields to prove their efficacy."

At the same time, we will need to increase bioenergy production to sustainably and continuously meet our nation's energy requirements. With support from the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), TERRA-MEPP is developing a low-cost robot that helps identify the top-performing biofuel plants in the field to pinpoint genes that will improve yield. TERRA-MEPP measures characteristics like stem height, width and leaf area for thousands of plants throughout the growing season; it is also autonomous, portable, and a fraction of the cost of agricultural gantry systems. Take the robot for a test drive at the field day and see it in action.

Meanwhile, as population and agricultural demands increase, carbon dioxide levels are predicted to hit 600 parts per million--a 50% increase over today's levels--and 2050 temperatures are expected to frequently match the top 5% hottest days from 1950-1979. We're studying how crops will react to these changing climatic conditions at SoyFACE (Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment), an innovative facility that artificially increases carbon dioxide, ozone, and temperature for growing crops in future field production conditions.

Today, yields are increasing by just one to two percent each year--meaning production in on track to fall short of our predicted 2050 needs. This field day will showcase work by RIPE, TERRA-MEPP, and SoyFACE to produce crops that can fill this gap, including three RIPE strategies that have increased yields by as much as 20%:

Reported in the journal Science--and named one of 12 key scientific advancements of 2016 by the Guardian--RIPE has increased plant productivity by boosting the levels of three proteins that help the plant quickly adapt to fluctuations in light. In 2016 field trials, scientists saw increases of 14 to 20% in the growth of modified tobacco, a model plant used to show proof of concept. In this year's field trials, they are further testing this method to boost photosynthesis.

Most carbon is turned into food, but some carbon is wasted when it is turned into a plant-toxic compound during photosynthesis. This compound is recycled through a process called photorespiration that costs plants a significant amount of energy. RIPE has engineered "interstate" bypasses to alleviate this problem and increase plant productivity by 18 to 20% in greenhouse trials. This year, they are testing their modified plants in the field and heating them to see if yield increases more in the higher temperatures expected in 2050.

The Calvin Cycle is the multi-step process in which enzymes convert light energy and carbon dioxide into sugar. RIPE is optimizing the amount of each enzyme to avoid bottlenecks in the system and increase productivity. Last year's preliminary field trials showed biomass increases from 25 to 40%. This year's plots will test three single genes, a double combination, and a triple combination of all three to see which combinations yield the most.

For more information, visit http://go.illinois.edu/fieldday17.


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