Tag Archives: John Sheehy

Bananas, Tomatoes

How Global Warming is Impacting Food Crops

I sent this Wall Street Journal online link to Dr. Bruce Matthews, the Interim Dean of UH Hilo’s College of Ag and Forestry.

Rising carbon-dioxide levels are slightly helping crops compete against weeds.

Two rival designs of plant biochemistry compete to dominate the globe. One, called C3 after the number of carbon atoms in the initial sugars it makes, is old, but still dominant. Rice is a C3 plant. The other, called C4, is newer in evolutionary history, and now has about 21% of the photosynthesis “market.” Corn is a C4 plant. In hot weather, the C3 mechanism becomes inefficient at grabbing carbon dioxide from the air, but in cool weather C4 stops working altogether. So at first glance it seems as if global warming should benefit C4…. Read the rest

He responded:
Thanks for sharing the article. Back in 2002 I spent a day with John Sheehy at IRRI (Los Banos, Laguna, Philippines) when he was just starting his work on trying to make a C4 rice plant.  He is retired now but still serves as a consultant to IRRI on plant physiology and breeding.
“Smart” crop varieties that yield more under higher temperatures and more frequent water stress with fewer inputs are pivotol to the future success of agriculture in the tropics. Result-oriented breeding programs are critically needed.
Bananas are a C4 plant and will do fine under rising temperatures. Tomatoes, a C3 plant, may benefit by breeding them into a C4 heat-tolerant plant.