Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.2
3.7
Journals
Agronomy
Special Issues
Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism to Enhance Crop Productivity
share announcement

Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism to Enhance Crop Productivity

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil and Plant Nutrition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2018) | Viewed by 18005

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Robert Sharwood

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Interests: rubisco; rubisco activase; climate extremes; photosynthesis; chloroplasts

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

With significant increases in the global population, and the accelerating changes in climate, maintaining future increases in yields of food and fibre crops is coming under serious threat. The impact of climate change will intensify with the continued reductions in arable land and the availability of water that is often limiting for crop production. Future climates are predicted to increase the intensity and frequency of extreme events, such as heatwaves and changes in rainfall patterns associated with droughts. Crops will now need to be equipped with flexible strategies to cope with these extreme climates to mitigate declines in productive yields associated with climate variability.

The objective of this Special Issue is to provide new research and review articles on recent advances in improving crop resource-use efficiency associated with improving photosynthesis and carbohydrate metabolism. The scope of this Special Issue will encompass all aspects of photosynthesis and respiration and the use of breeding and molecular engineering efforts to enhance crop productivity to mitigate the influence of future changes in climate.

Dr. Robert Sharwood
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Photosynthesis
  • CO2 assimilation
  • Respiration
  • Water Use Efficiency
  • Nitrogen Use Efficiency
  • Rubisco
  • Rubisco activase
  • Sucrose transport
  • Carbohydrate synthesis

Published Papers (4 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

16 pages, 2104 KiB  
Article
Quantification of Soluble Metabolites and Compound-Specific δ13C in Response to Water Availability and Developmental Stages in Field Grown Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.)
by Kathryn Dumschott, Carola H. Blessing and Andrew Merchant
Agronomy 2018, 8(7), 115; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy8070115 - 05 Jul 2018
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 3106
Abstract
Developing biomarkers and bio-indicators that will better indicate stress tolerance is crucial for plant breeding to increase crop resilience and productivity. However, complex interactions between water availability, light intensity, and temperature fluctuations make it difficult to develop standardised properties to monitor performance under [...] Read more.
Developing biomarkers and bio-indicators that will better indicate stress tolerance is crucial for plant breeding to increase crop resilience and productivity. However, complex interactions between water availability, light intensity, and temperature fluctuations make it difficult to develop standardised properties to monitor performance under field conditions. Sugar alcohols have been shown to function as stress metabolites, demonstrating considerable promise for use as bio-indicators of stress tolerance. This experiment monitored the accumulation of metabolites, including that of the sugar alcohol D-pinitol, in 3 chickpea genotypes grown under field conditions during reproductive stages of development. Further, compound specific carbon isotope abundance (δ13C) of these compounds was quantified to investigate the influence on predictions of water use efficiency. It was found that the magnitude of water deficit did not instigate significant responses in metabolite abundance, however, concentrations of D-pinitol increased significantly over reproductive stages, indicating the accumulation of this sugar alcohol may be under significant developmental control. Significant differences in the δ13C of D-pinitol compared to other metabolites indicate this compound imparts a substantial effect over concentration-weighted predictions of water use efficiency obtained from the soluble fraction of leaves, especially as its proportion in the soluble fraction increases with plant development. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism to Enhance Crop Productivity)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

15 pages, 956 KiB  
Article
Dissecting Wheat Grain Yield Drivers in a Mapping Population in the UK
by João P. Pennacchi, Elizabete Carmo-Silva, P. John Andralojc, David Feuerhelm, Stephen J. Powers and Martin A. J. Parry
Agronomy 2018, 8(6), 94; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy8060094 - 14 Jun 2018
Cited by 17 | Viewed by 4753
Abstract
Improving crop yields arises as a solution to ensure food security in the future scenarios of a growing world population, changes in food consumption patterns, climate change, and limitations on resources allocated to agriculture. Defining traits that can be reliable cornerstones to yield [...] Read more.
Improving crop yields arises as a solution to ensure food security in the future scenarios of a growing world population, changes in food consumption patterns, climate change, and limitations on resources allocated to agriculture. Defining traits that can be reliable cornerstones to yield improvement and understanding of their interaction and influence on yield formation is an important part of ensuring the success of breeding programs for high yields. Traits that can drive yield increases, such as light interception and conversion efficiency, as well as carbon assimilation and allocation, were intensively phenotyped in a double-haploid wheat mapping population grown under field conditions in the UK. Traits were analysed for their correlation to yield, genetic variation, and broad-sense heritability. Canopy cover and reflectance, biomass production, and allocation to stems and leaves, as well as flag leaf photosynthesis at a range of light levels measured pre- and post-anthesis correlated with plant productivity and contributed to explaining different strategies of wheat lines to attain high grain yields. This research mapped multiple traits related to light conversion into biomass. The findings highlight the need to phenotype traits throughout the growing season and support the approach of targeting photosynthesis and its components as traits for breeding high yielding wheat. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism to Enhance Crop Productivity)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

18 pages, 29749 KiB  
Article
Genetic Diversity of Diurnal Carbohydrate Accumulation in White Clover (Trifolium repens L.)
by Michael E. Ruckle, Lucia Bernasconi, Roland Kölliker, Samuel C. Zeeman and Bruno Studer
Agronomy 2018, 8(4), 47; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy8040047 - 13 Apr 2018
Cited by 8 | Viewed by 4978
Abstract
White clover (Trifolium repens L.) is one of the most important legumes for fodder production in temperate climates, particularly in intensive pasture systems. Like many other forage legumes, it lacks the energy content to maximize productivity of modern ruminant livestock breeds. White [...] Read more.
White clover (Trifolium repens L.) is one of the most important legumes for fodder production in temperate climates, particularly in intensive pasture systems. Like many other forage legumes, it lacks the energy content to maximize productivity of modern ruminant livestock breeds. White clover produces water-soluble carbohydrates and starch in its leaves as a diurnal product of photosynthesis. However, little is known about the genetically encoded variability of diel changes in carbohydrate content. We assessed the amount of glucose, fructose, sucrose, and starch in the leaves of 185 plants of a genetically diverse white clover population. Water-soluble carbohydrates only provided on average 10.6% of dry weight (DW) of the total analyzed non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) content at the end of the day (ED), while starch supplied 89.4% of the NSC content. The top 5% of individuals accumulated over 25% of their DW as starch at ED. The leaf starch content at ED showed up to a threefold difference between genotypes, with a repeatability value of 0.95. Our experiments illustrate both the physical potential of white clover to serve as a competitive energy source to meet the demand of modern ruminant livestock production and the genetic potential to improve this trait by breeding. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism to Enhance Crop Productivity)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

20 pages, 2095 KiB  
Article
Dynamic Carbohydrate Supply and Demand Model of Vegetative Growth: Response to Temperature, Light, Carbon Dioxide, and Day Length
by Martin P. N. Gent
Agronomy 2018, 8(2), 21; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy8020021 - 16 Feb 2018
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 4717
Abstract
Predicting the growth response of seedlings from the environmental responses of photosynthesis and metabolism may be improved by considering the dynamics of non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) over a diurnal cycle. Attenuation of growth metabolism when NSC content is low could explain why some NSC [...] Read more.
Predicting the growth response of seedlings from the environmental responses of photosynthesis and metabolism may be improved by considering the dynamics of non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) over a diurnal cycle. Attenuation of growth metabolism when NSC content is low could explain why some NSC is conserved through the night. A dynamic model, incorporating diurnal variation in NSC, is developed to simulate growth of seedlings hour-by-hour. I compare predictions of this model to published growth and NSC data for seedlings that varied according to temperature, light, day length, or CO2. Prolonged-darkness experiments show a temperature dependent upper limit on the respiration capacity. Respiration is attenuated as NSC is depleted. Furthermore, when NSC is high at dawn, inhibition of photosynthesis could attenuate the accumulation of NSC under low temperature, high light, or high CO2. These concepts are used to simulate plant metabolism and growth rates and diurnal variation of NSC in tomato seedlings under two light levels and various temperatures. Comparison of other results using the same model parameters show the dynamic model could predict results for starch and starch-less plants, and when growth was affected by CO2 enrichment and day length. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Photosynthetic Carbon Metabolism to Enhance Crop Productivity)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-4
Back to TopTop