U.S. flagAn official website of the United States government
                    Here's how you know **Official websites use .gov**
                            
                            A **.gov** website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
 **Secure .gov websites use HTTPS**
                            
                            A **lock** (                            
                              A locked padlock                                                      
                            
                            ) or **https://** means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.


Menu Agricultural Research Service
						
                    U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
 Global Change and Photosynthesis Research: Urbana, IL
 close



    Research

                    Research Projects
                                    Publications
                                    Collaborations
                                    News
                People

                    Staff Listing
                                    CareersSearch small
                    Search
            
            ARS Home
                                About ARS
                                Contact Us




ARS Home Midwest Area Urbana, Illinois Global Change and Photosynthesis Research Research





- Ainsworth, Elizabeth - Lisa
- Bernacchi, Carl
- Brooks, Matthew
- McGrath, Justin
- 2023
- Publications
- Soil and Air (212)
- Sustainable Agricultural Systems Research (216)
- Plant Genetic Resources, Genomics and Genetic Improvement (301)

Research Project: **Location:
                            Global Change and Photosynthesis Research** Project Number: 5012-21000-032-000-D
                        
                        Project Type: In-House Appropriated Start Date: Apr 6, 2023
                        
                        End Date: Apr 5, 2028 **Objective:**
                        
                        Objective 1: Develop, test, and quantify the benefits of specific strategies for agricultural greenhouse gas mitigation, including enhanced rock weathering, overwintering corn and soybean, expanded use of cover crops, and genetic manipulations to increase photosynthetic efficiency.
Sub-objective 1.A: Apply micrometeorological techniques to quantify ecosystem-scale fluxes of greenhouse gases, energy, and water in response to environmental variability, land-use change, and variable management practices.
Sub-objective 1.B: Test the effect of basalt application on maize and soybean leaf and seed nutrient content.
Objective 2: Adapt crops to future atmospheric conditions through identifying key genes and loci associated with CO2 response, N use efficiency, crop quality and ozone tolerance.
Sub-Objective 2.A: Identify the genetic factors that coordinate photosynthesis with N availability and characterize how manipulation of these factors impacts plant traits.
Sub-objective 2.B: Test whether the ability to obtain biologically fixed N provides an advantage to how plants acclimate to elevated CO2 and characterize the factors that signal C/N status between source and sink tissues.
Sub-objective 2.C: Test soybean response to elevated ozone and drought stress.
Sub-objective 2.D: Design an experiment to disentangle the relative contributions of high temperature and increased vapor pressure deficit on the physiology, growth, and yields of soybean.
Objective 3: Develop and apply tools using a field-based high-throughput phenotyping platform to quantify growth, physiology, yield quantity, yield quality, and scalability of crop adaptations to current and future environmental conditions.
Sub-objective 3.A: Develop multi- and hyper- spectral techniques for high-throughput phenotyping of leaf, plant, and canopy growth, physiological, and nutritional properties to associate genotype to phenotype and to quantify physiological responses to genetic manipulations to increased photosynthetic efficiency.
Sub-objective 3.B: Develop and test hyperspectral methods to measure soil characteristics, including water content, and iron and zinc concentrations.
Objective 4: Develop, train, and validate computer models of crop nutrient uptake and growth in order to identify traits and genes that will improve crop quality and yield.
Sub-objective 4.A: Develop models of yield for key crops that include effects of CO2 concentration, temperature, soil characteristics and vapor pressure.
Sub-objective 4.B: Develop soil and root nutrient uptake and distribution models. **Approach:**
                        
                        Research aims to understand and reduce the negative impacts of agriculture by quantifying greenhouse gas fluxes using Eddy covariance techniques, investigating the effectiveness of soil amendments to store carbon, and developing state-of-the-art high-throughput techniques for fast and accurate measurements of crop traits. Experiments will test how elevated carbon dioxide impacts enhanced rock weathering in corn and soybean ecosystems and will monitor carbon dioxide, water and ozone fluxes in long-term experimental facilities. Research will test how interrelated metabolic and stress response pathways are coordinated at the genetic scale, generate crop models that identify trait and gene targets for crop improvement, and develop novel high throughput phenotyping techniques to measure plant and canopy traits and efficiently process immense data streams from sensors. Experimental approaches scale from the molecular to the ecosystem level, combining biophysics, physiology, molecular biology, genetics, and genomics. Research will take advantage of unique field and greenhouse experimental and monitoring facilities, along with integrated collaborations with other ARS and university researchers and commercial farmers.


Return to top


Connect with ARS Sign up


ARS Home
                            USDA.gov
                            Plain Writing
                            Policies & Links
                            Civil Rights Statements
                            FOIA
                            Accessibility Statement
                            Privacy Policy
                            Non-Discrimination Statement
                            Quality of Information
                            USA.gov
                            WhiteHouse.gov