Light filters through a canopy of soybeans. 

Multigene bioengineering of photosynthesis recently was shown to increase soybean yields. After more than a decade of working toward that goal, an international research team has genetically altered soybean plants to increase the efficiency of photosynthesis.

The researchers are part of Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency – RIPE – an international research project. They aim to increase global food production by improving photosynthetic efficiency in food crops.

Their findings recently published in Science. They improved a construct within the soybean plant to improve photosynthesis and then conducted field trials to see if yield would be improved. The construct contains three genes that code for proteins of the xanthophyll cycle. It’s a pigment cycle that helps in the photoprotection of plants.

Once in full sunlight the cycle is activated in the plant’s leaves. That protects them from damage, allowing leaves to dissipate excess energy. But when leaves are shaded the photoprotection deactivates so leaves can continue the photosynthesis process with a reserve of sunlight. It takes several minutes for the plant to deactivate the protective mechanism. That costs plants time that could have been used for photosynthesis.

Overexpression of the three genes from the construct accelerates the process. So every time a leaf transitions from light to shade the photoprotection deactivates more quickly. Leaves gain extra minutes of photosynthesis which, when accumulated throughout the growing season, increases the total photosynthetic rate. The researchers showed that despite achieving a more than 20 percent increase in yield, seed quality wasn’t impacted.

“That suggests some of the extra energy gained from improved photosynthesis was likely diverted to nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the plant’s nodules,” said Stephen Long, director of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency project.

The researchers first tested their idea in tobacco plants because of the ease of transforming the crop’s genetics and the amount of seeds that can be produced from a single plant. Those factors enable researchers to progress from genetic transformation to a field trial within months. Once the concept was proven in tobacco, they moved to the more-complicated task of incorporating the genetics into soybeans.

“Substantial yield increases in both tobacco and soybean, two very different crops, suggests this has universal applicability,” Long said. “Our study shows that realizing yield improvements is strongly affected by the environment.”

Additional field tests of the transgenic soybeans are being conducted in 2022. The researchers are expected to report results in early 2023.

The project’s technologies are planned to be made available to farmers who need them the most, with a focus on Sub-Saharan Africa. It’s one of the world’s fastest-growing areas for soybeans, according to the Soybean Innovation Lab.

“Funding support in the past ten years has allowed us to engineer alleviation of some bottlenecks and test products at field scale,” Long said. “After years of trial and tribulation it’s rewarding to see such a spectacular result.”

Visit ripe.illinois.edu for more information.

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Light filters through a canopy of soybeans. 

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