Manipulation of photosynthetic carbon metabolism in wheat to improve yield

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Ensuring food security is a major challenge given the projected need to increase world food production by 40% in the next 20 years and 70% by 2050 (FAO forecasts). There is clearly an urgent need to develop crop plants that yield higher outputs per unit area of land, without having to increase inputs of fertiliser or water. The aims of this research proposal are to test the hypotheses that: 1) The existing variation in photosynthetic capacity can be exploited to increase photosynthesis and total biomass of modern wheat cultivars; and 2) Genetic manipulation of photosynthetic carbon metabolism can lead to enhanced photosynthetic performance in crop plants and result in higher yields, increased nitrogen use efficiency and increased resource-use efficiency. We will screen existing wheat germplasm from a range of sources using a combination of carbon isotope discrimination, gas analysis and biochemical assays to identify plants with improved photosynthetic characteristics for use in future breeding programmes. We will also produce transgenic wheat plants with altered levels of SBPase and Rubisco. A detailed physiological and molecular analysis of the resulting transgenic lines will be carried out to determine the impact of photosynthetic parameters on growth in greenhouse grown plants.