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Volume 7, Issue 9(Suppl) J Earth Sci Clim Change
ISSN: 2157-7617 JESCC, an open access journal
Page 64
Climate Change 2016
October 27-29, 2016
conferenceseries.com
October 24-26, 2016 Valencia, Spain
World Conference onClimate Change
Photosynthetic acclimation and enhanced crop productivity in response to climate change: The grand
design of photosynthesis
Daniel Arnon first proposed the notion of a ‘grand design of photosynthesis’ in 1982 to illustrate the central role of
photosynthesis as the primary energy transformer for all life on Earth. However, I suggest that this concept is also
consistent with the broad impact of the chloroplast not only in global energy transformation but also in the regulation of plant
growth, development and ultimately crop seed yield. I reviewed recent data that support the important roles of chloroplast
redox imbalance in governing plant acclimation to abiotic stress through localized, intracellular retrograde signal transduction
pathways as well as long distance, intercellular signal transduction pathways within a single plant. We suggest that the family
of nuclear C-repeat binding transcription factors (CBFs) may be critical components that link enhanced photosynthetic
performance and chloroplast redox regulation with the accumulation of growth-active gibberellins, the dwarf phenotype, and
increased seed yield under controlled environmental conditions in overwintering cultivars in an array of plant species. We
show that the controlled environment data for enhanced wheat seed yields confirm 60 years of seed yield data from the field.
These data are discussed in terms of the molecular mechanism underlying the development of semi-dwarf cereals which were
the basis of the green revolution of the 1960s. Based on differential seed yield data worldwide, we propose that, in the short
term, the gaps in wheat seed yield between Europe, China and North America since 1964 could be reduced by increasing the
area seeded with winter versus spring wheat varieties. In the long-term, exploitation of CBF overexpression by either classical
plant breeding or through biotechnology may contribute to either the maintenance or perhaps even the enhancement of crop
productivity under future climate change scenarios.
Biography
Norman PAHüner is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Environmental Stress Biology and the Founder and Principal Scientist of the Biotron Centre for Experimental
Climate Change Research, University of Western Ontario focused on the elucidation of the mechanisms by which plants, microbes and insects sense and adjust
to climate change. He elected as a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada in 1995 and was the past Director of the Life Sciences Division, Academy III, the Royal
Society of Canada as well as past President of the Canadian Society of Plant Biologists. Since 1980, his research group has pioneered the concept of excitation
pressure as a redox sensing mechanism in plants, algae and cyanobacteria.
Norman P A Hüner
University of Western Ontario, Canada
Norman P A Hüner, J Earth Sci Clim Change 2016, 7:9(Suppl)