Journal Article

Enhanced thylakoid photoprotection can increase yield and canopy radiation use efficiency in rice

Smillie, Ian R. A., Swarup, Ranjan, Zhao, Liang, Murchie, Erik H., Heatley, Matthew, Foo, Chuan Ching, Hubbart, Stella

2018

Overview

High sunlight can raise plant growth rates but can potentially cause cellular damage. The likelihood of deleterious effects is lowered by a sophisticated set of photoprotective mechanisms, one of the most important being the controlled dissipation of energy from chlorophyll within photosystem II (PSII) measured as non-photochemical quenching (NPQ). Although ubiquitous, the role of NPQ in plant productivity remains uncertain because it momentarily reduces the quantum efficiency of photosynthesis. Here we used plants overexpressing the gene encoding a central regulator of NPQ, the protein PsbS, within a major crop species (rice)  to assess the effect of photoprotection at the whole canopy scale. We accounted for canopy light interception, to our knowledge for the first time in this context. We show that in comparison to wild-type plants, psbS overexpressors increased canopy radiation use efficiency and grain yield in fluctuating light, demonstrating that photoprotective mechanisms should be altered to improve rice crop productivity. Stella Hubbart et al. show that over-expression of the photoprotective protein gene psbS leads to enhanced canopy-level radiation use efficiency and grain yield in rice. The results demonstrate that alterations to photoprotection and light-harvesting processes could be used to improve yield in rice crops.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group
• Subject: 38 / 38/77 / 631/449/1734/2687 / 631/449/2686 / Agricultural production / Biology / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Chlorophyll / Efficiency / Growth rate / Herbivores / Life Sciences / Light interception / Overexpression / Photosynthesis / Photosystem II / Rice