Why Scientists Want to Help Plants Capture More Carbon Dioxide

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October 25, 2022

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by Casey Crownhart (MIT Technology Review) Genetic tools that have helped create resilient crops could boost carbon removal, too. — … In the session, I sat down with Pamela Ronald, a plant geneticist at the University of California, Davis. She’s been working for years on helping rice survive floods, and now she’s turning her attention to using advanced genetics for carbon removal on farmland.

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The research is spearheaded by the Innovative Genomics Institute, founded by Nobel Prize winner and CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna.

I wrote about this project back in June when it was announced with funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. At ClimateTech, Ronald walked me through more details on the goal of the project.

“The most effective and amazing carbon removal technology is photosynthesis,” Ronald said in our interview.

Plants naturally draw down carbon dioxide and transform it into complex compounds like sugars. Many of the sugars made in photosynthesis are eventually broken down again, returning to the atmosphere. But some carbon stays in the soil—and Ronald and her team want to help bump up how much.

There are a few prongs to this plan.

Boost photosynthesis, so crops can grow more quickly and suck up more carbon.
Grow plants with especially long roots, so that more carbon ends up deep underground.
Help plants associate with specific bacteria. This one is a bit complicated, but basically some bacteria help mineralize carbon dioxide underground, trapping it.

In addition to tweaking plants, researchers will work to better understand how carbon is moving through plants and the surrounding environment to see how much they’re actually helping. READ MORE

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