Centre of Excellence harnessing the power of warm climate crops

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Translational Photosynthesis (CETP), led by Professor Robert Furbank, aims to boost the yields and performance of the world’s most common cereal crops to feed a population that will soon hit nine billion people.

The CETP is a research collaboration that brings together prominent scientists from The Australian National University, Western Sydney University, The University of Sydney, The University of Queensland, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, and International Rice Research Institute, to apply a mix of advanced scientific techniques to boost the productivity of cereal crops.

Researchers at the Western Sydney University node are focusing on discovering the mechanisms that make warm climate crops, such as maize and sorghum, more productive to translate these traits into more commonly grown cool climate crops, such as wheat and rice.

Associate Professor Oula Ghannoum, a Chief Investigator at CETP and based at Western Sydney University, has demonstrated that photosynthesis in warm climate plants does not respond to temperature as was previously thought. This has implications for warm climate crops that are specially adapted to thrive in hot and dry environments.

Researchers at the ARC Centre of Excellence believe that understanding and harnessing these photosynthesis pathways is the key to the next ‘Green Revolution’ to secure our food supplies in a rapidly warming and more climate-variable world.

	The concept of ‘translational photosynthesis’ is about boosting crop productivity. One approach is to transfer the superior traits of warm climate crops, such as sorghum and maize, into cool climate crops including rice, wheat and barley.

 

Image: CETP researchers Fiona Koller and Associate Professor Oula Ghannoum are looking for plant traits that enhance the ability of our cereal crops to cope with warmer, drier conditions. Image credit: Charles Tambiah, The Australian National University.