A New Era for Crop Improvement： From Model- Guided Rationale Design to Practical Engineering

作     者：Chengcai Chu 

作者机构：The State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics and National Center of Plant Gene Research (Beijing) Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Beijing 100101 China 

出 版 物：《Molecular Plant》 (分子植物（英文版）)

年 卷 期：2015年第8卷第9期

页      面：1299-1301页

核心收录：

学科分类：0710[理学-生物学] 07[理学] 0828[工学-农业工程] 08[工学] 09[农学] 071007[理学-遗传学] 0901[农学-作物学] 0836[工学-生物工程] 090102[农学-作物遗传育种] 0713[理学-生态学] 

基　　金：supported by a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China 

主　　题：New Era Crop Improvement Model-Guided 

摘      要：Photosynthesis is the basis of plant productivity. There is still a big gap between the efficiency of theoretical maximal photosyn- thetic energy conversion and the efficiency realized in the field. It was estimated that for C3 plants, the theoretical maximal energy conversion efficiency is ca. 4.6%, the observed maximal season- long energy conversion efficiency is about 2.4%, while the typical season-long energy conversion efficiency is only 0.8% （Zhu et al., 2010）. Despite this, however, photosynthesis has not been effectively used as a breeding target for crop improvement so far. When plants grow under elevated CO2, the crop yields are higher, clearly showing that enhancing photosynthesis can be used to improve yields （Long et al., 2006; Zhu et al., 2010）. Two reasons underlie the failure of improving photosynthesis for greater yields. First, photosynthesis is difficult to phenotype compared with other traits such as flowering time, plant height, leaf erectness, etc.; second, canopy photosynthesis, instead of leaf photosynthesis, is related to crop biomass and yield, however, there is no effective way to measure canopy photosynthesis and to identify the factors controlling canopy photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency.