The international research project ‘Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency’ RIPE has been awarded $34 million by Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations.

The grant will support RIPE researchers, including plant scientists at Lancaster University, over the next four years. In its 10-year history, RIPE, which is led by the University of Illinois, has demonstrated large increases in crop productivity in replicated field trials.

RIPE researchers will continue to look for further gains, with a focus on sustainably increasing the photosynthetic efficiency of cowpea and soybean.

Lancaster University-based RIPE research is focused on the Rubisco enzyme in cowpea and soybean. The Lancaster work package is led by Professor Elizabete Carmo-Silva and involves Lancaster Environment Centre researchers Professor Martin Parry, Dr Doug Orr and Dr Sam Taylor.

Professor Carmo-Silva said: “Rubisco is not very efficient and limits productivity in these major sub-Saharan food crops. Our work focuses on improving the carbon conversion efficiency of Rubisco to increase the yield of the crop, while also improving its ability to withstand heat stress in a warming climate.”

RIPE researchers have pursued the theory that the photosynthesis process in crops could be engineered to increase productivity.

RIPE Director Stephen Long, a professor of crop sciences and of plant biology at Illinois, said: “It succeeded in demonstrating three separate engineering approaches to achieve this – each of which showed the potential to produce a more than 20% increase in productivity.”

The new grant will expand on this work, accelerating progress to deliver royalty-free benefits to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Originally funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF); the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; and the U.S. Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research; RIPE will continue under the auspices of Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations, a not-for-profit subsidiary of BMGF created to leverage global crop science to meet the needs of smallholder farmers in Africa and South Asia.

“We’re thrilled to support such groundbreaking work,” said Joe Cornelius, the CEO of Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations. “Optimising the biological processes of crops has profound implications for small-scale agriculture in developing countries, unlocking improvements in productivity without requiring more inputs from farmers with limited resources.”

RIPE research partners include the University of Illinois; University of California, Berkeley; the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service; the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, in Australia; and the Universities of Cambridge, Essex and Lancaster.