Crop4Clima

Future crops as carbon sinks

Global warming, caused by anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (in particular CO2), is expected to rise from 2.5°C to 4°C by the end of the century. Increasing temperatures and extreme weather events will likely reduce agricultural productivity and food security. Future crops must act as carbon sinks to mitigate climate change, plus have higher resilience and productivity to feed the global population. The project Crop4Clima is developing new canola and rapeseed variants— significant international and EU crops—able to assimilate 60% more CO2 through photorespiration, requiring 20% less water and increasing biomass while maintaining high oil content. The project is developing these new crops by improving and bringing to commercial use the synthetic TaCo metabolic pathway, which turns photorespiration into a CO2-fixing instead of a CO2-releasing process, leading to increased net carbon-uptake under agronomical standards and drought field conditions. Crop4Clima technology holds commercial prospects for similar C3 crops, such as soybean, cotton, rice, etc. It could increase the resilience and sustainability of crops while converting them into an effective carbon sink.