By 2050, an estimated 10Gt of CO2 per annum needs to be removed from the atmosphere to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. However currently there are no proven scalable solutions to meet this challenge.

A team from the University of Illinois has discovered two plant stem-specific expression of genes, the promoters of which could potentially serve as a tool for increasing oil production in energycane, a type of sugarcane with the capability of producing more biomass in harsh conditions, leading to higher oil production for fuels. 

Komorebi is a Japanese word that describes how light filters through leaves—creating shifting, dappled “sunflecks” that illustrate plants’ ever-changing light environment. Crops harness light energy to fix carbon dioxide into food via photosynthesis.

Plants convert sunlight into energy through photosynthesis; however, most crops on the planet are plagued by a photosynthetic glitch, and to deal with it, evolved an energy-expensive process called photorespiration that drastically suppresses their yield potential. Today, researchers from the University of Illinois and U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service report in the journal Science that crops engineered with a photorespiratory shortcut are 40 percent more productive in real-world agronomic conditions.