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MSU discovers plant switch
Improving plant efficiency to feed and fuel a growing population continues to challenge the plant research community. Dave Kramer, Michigan State University Distinguished Professor in Photosynthesis and Bioenergetics, says the rate of traditional plant breeding is slowing down and research needs to look at more than plant architecture to increase efficiencies. “The next step we have to improve is the actual machinery of photosynthesis and we need to make it better.”
Kramer’s research team has identified a switch that regulates and balances plant photosynthesis. “We think that this switch is important particularly under dynamic, fluctuating, unpredictable changes in weather or in other conditions.”
Kramer says the switch regulates the life and death of the plant as well as its productivity. Better understanding that he says can lead to breeding plants that balance energy production during photosynthesis and grow more efficiently.
Kramer says they’re taking discoveries like this plant switch into the field through his PhotosynQ project. He’s helped develop an affordable hand-held device which can measure phenomic plant data. He says PhotosynQ links to a global online community of open experiments which could be conducted by farmers, plant breeders or extension.
AUDIO with Dave Kramer (6:07):
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