U.S. corn and soybean varieties have become increasingly heat and drought resistant as agricultural production adapts to a changing climate. But the focus on developing crops for extreme conditions has negatively affected performance under normal weather patterns, a University of Illinois study shows.
Don Ort, Professor of Plant Biology, with Stephen Long, Professor of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology, discuss corn belt yield limits in a recent perspective in Science magazine.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has received a five–year, $5.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop ozone-resistance in corn. These strains have the potential to combat the losses climate change and air pollutants have caused in crop yield. A team at the Institute for Genomic Biology in the Genomic Ecology of Global Change (GEGC) research theme will lead the research.
