Supercharged photosynthesis could help boost crop yields within decade

[Plazma Inferno!]

In December, geneticists announced that they'd made a major advance in engineering rice plants to carry out photosynthesis in a more efficient way—much as corn and many fast-growing weeds do. The advance, by a consortium of 12 laboratories in eight countries, removes a big obstacle from scientists' efforts to dramatically increase the production of rice and, potentially, wheat. It comes at a time when yields of those two crops, which together feed nearly 40 percent of the world, are dangerously leveling off, making it increasingly difficult to meet rapidly growing food demand.
The supercharged process, called C4 photosynthesis, boosts plants' growth by capturing carbon dioxide and concentrating it in specialized cells in the leaves. That allows the photosynthetic process to operate much more efficiently. It's the reason corn and sugarcane grow so productively; if C4 rice ever comes about, it will tower over conventional rice within a few weeks of planting. Despite the genetic changes, the altered rice plants still rely primarily on their usual form of photosynthesis.
Researchers calculate that engineering C4 photosynthesis into rice and wheat could increase yields per hectare by roughly 50 percent within a decade, thus feeding billion more people.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535011/supercharged-photosynthesis/

 

[iceaura]

This was a first step - very good news, but a long way from the goal.

The implication that we are now ten years from a 50% boost in per-hectare yields of rice or wheat is - - optimistic. Some background:
http://www.plantphysiol.org/content/155/1/56.full

Notice that the larger scale physiological modifications are critical (as the OP link does note, in lower paragraphs) and currently genetically obscure - and that the achievement of engineering into rice just the basic reaction capability, which was genetically well described more than ten years ago (my link), took at least ten years.

We hope that things are speeding up, that new techniques will shorten the time it takes to get a handle on the genetics of the physiological stuff and get them into rice or wheat. And that when we do, the results will be rice plants making more rice, rather than rice plants growing big leaves.