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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Wasim Iqbal, Dr Rebecca Moore, Iain Hope, Dr Danny Cowan-Turner, Dr Maxim KapralovORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2021 The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology.Improving the performance of the CO2-fixing enzyme Rubisco is among the targets for increasing crop yields. Here, Earth system model (ESM) representations of canopy C3 and C4 photosynthesis were combined with species-specific Rubisco parameters to quantify the consequences of bioengineering foreign Rubiscos into C3 and C4 crops under field conditions. The 'two big leaf' (sunlit/shaded) model for canopy photosynthesis was used together with species-specific Rubisco kinetic parameters including maximum rate (Kcat), Michaelis-Menten constant for CO2 at ambient atmospheric O2 (Kc21%O2), specificity for CO2 to O2 (Sc/o), and associated heat activation (Ha) values. Canopy-scale consequences of replacing native Rubiscos in wheat, maize, and sugar beet with foreign enzymes from 27 species were modelled using data from Ameriflux and Fluxnet databases. Variation among the included Rubisco kinetics differentially affected modelled carbon uptake rates, and Rubiscos from several species of C4 grasses showed the greatest potential of >50% carbon uptake improvement in wheat, and >25% improvement in sugar beet and maize. This study also reaffirms the need for data on fully characterized Rubiscos from more species, and for better parameterization of 'Vcmax' and temperature response of 'Jmax' in ESMs.
Author(s): Iqbal WA, Miller IG, Moore RL, Hope IJ, Cowan-Turner D, Kapralov MV
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Experimental Botany
Year: 2021
Volume: 72
Issue: 17
Pages: 6066-6075
Online publication date: 11/06/2021
Acceptance date: 09/06/2021
Date deposited: 12/07/2023
ISSN (print): 0022-0957
ISSN (electronic): 1460-2431
Publisher: Oxford University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erab278
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/erab278
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