Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a university sending out a press release showing the potential benefits on crop yields of elevated atmospheric CO2 levels. – Anthony
Public release date: 9-Feb-2009
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/uoia-hcb020609.php
Contact: Diana Yates
217-333-5802
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
High CO2 boosts plant respiration, potentially affecting climate and crops
The leaves of soybeans grown at the elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) levels predicted for the year 2050 respire more than those grown under current atmospheric conditions, researchers report, a finding that will help fine-tune climate models and could point to increased crop yields as CO2 levels rise. The study, from researchers at the University of Illinois and the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Plants draw CO2 from the atmosphere and make sugars through the process of photosynthesis. But they also release some CO2 during respiration as they use the sugars to generate energy for self-maintenance and growth. How elevated CO2 affects plant respiration will therefore influence future food supplies and the extent to which plants can capture CO2 from the air and store it as carbon in their tissues. While there is broad agreement that higher atmospheric CO2 levels stimulate photosynthesis in C3 plants, such as soybean, no such consensus exists on how rising CO2 levels will affect plant respiration.
IMAGE: Andrew Leakey and assistants at work in the Soy FACE facility at Illinois. Click here for more information.
“There’s been a great deal of controversy about how plant respiration responds to elevated CO2,” said U. of I. plant biology professor Andrew Leakey, who led the study. “Some summary studies suggest it will go down by 18 percent, some suggest it won’t change, and some suggest it will increase as much as 11 percent.” Understanding how the respiratory pathway responds when plants are grown at elevated CO2 is key to reducing this uncertainty, Leakey said.
His team used microarrays, a genomic tool that can detect changes in the activity of thousands of genes at a time, to learn which genes in the high CO2 plants were being switched on at higher or lower levels than those of the soybeans grown at current CO2 levels. Rather than assessing plants grown in chambers in a greenhouse, as most studies have done, Leakey’s team made use of the Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment (Soy FACE) facility at Illinois. This open-air research lab can expose a soybean field to a variety of atmospheric CO2 levels – without isolating the plants from other environmental influences, such as rainfall, sunlight and insects. Some of the plants were exposed to atmospheric CO2 levels of 550 parts per million (ppm), the level predicted for the year 2050 if current trends continue. These were compared to plants grown at ambient CO2 levels (380 ppm).
The results were striking. At least 90 different genes coding the majority of enzymes in the cascade of chemical reactions that govern respiration were switched on (expressed) at higher levels in the soybeans grown at high CO2 levels. This explained how the plants were able to use the increased supply of sugars from stimulated photosynthesis under high CO2 conditions to produce energy, Leakey said. The rate of respiration increased 37 percent at the elevated CO2 levels. The enhanced respiration is likely to support greater transport of sugars from leaves to other growing parts of the plant, including the seeds, Leakey said. “The expression of over 600 genes was altered by elevated CO2 in total, which will help us to understand how the response is regulated and also hopefully produce crops that will perform better in the future,” he said.
IMAGE: Illinois plant biology professor Andrew Leakey led a team that discovered that soybean leaves speed up their metabolism in response to rising CO2. Click here for more information.
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Dang, I wish they had measured ambient temperature a few feet above the test plots.
Somebody tell them to “go back and do it again.”
REPLY: They probably have an agrimet station nearby, most ag experiment stations in the midwest do. – Anthony
Boy does this bring back memories. My ex had to write a paper on soybeans for his final senior class in the Crops and Soils department at Oregon State University. Problem was, he was a pointer pecker. Could only type with his pointer fingers. He was also (and still is) a bit dyslexic. So I agreed to type his paper. That was back when there was no such thing as computer cut and paste. I used scissors and glue. By the time I was done, I could have read that paper back to him verbatim without looking. It is still a fond memory.
OT, Anthony, what is that station in Wallowa County, Oregon that has not been surveyed yet? Is it in Wallowa? You want me to look at it?
REPLY: They probably have an agrimet station nearby, most ag experiment stations in the midwest do. – Anthony
Would most ag ex. stations have the soy FACE technology?
Seems that rising CO2 is nature’s viagra for beanstalks.
The Beeville TX A&M Agrilife Research Center is a USHCN weather station.
And Anthony, I re-emailed Jeff re photos and he quickly responded that he has to fill in a hole that he had dug to fix a water leak, before he takes the pix.
Irrigation? Wet bulb?
This might explain why huge tankers deliver CO2 to the greenhouses and then they pump it in those greenhouses, to make the plants grow larger. Would have been quicker and cheaper to ask a greenhouse farmer, they figured this out years ago.
Well, I thought that the science was settled and CO2 was good for nothing whatsoever. It seems that the more we know, the better CO2 is for life on earth. Too bad so many believe that the science is settled. I’m sure that we will soon hear that there are problems with this study.
Those who follow the science, instead of the money and politics, have known for a long time that increased CO2 increases and crop yields. This is more confirmation of the good that CO2 accomplishes.
Ummmm! Didn’t Idso, et al already cover this??? …maybe starting 40 of 50 years ago??? CO2 is GOOD for us!!!
This is another indication that plants that evolved when CO2 levels were higher grow better in CO2 rich air. Most of the plants on Earth today evolved when CO2 levels were about 5 times current levels. In fact, CO2 levels were at a record low before industrial activity began to replace atmospheric CO2 that had been sequestered in fossil fuel and the CO2 levels are now recovering to something closer to “normal” over geological time. Had we not begun releasing this CO2, it has been hypothesized that plant production would have begun to fall off and we would be facing a mass extinction of plant life on Earth.
Does this mean that CO2 levels can be verified with soybeans?
I learned about photosynthesis way back when I was in grade school. It utilizes CO2 and gives of O2. Is it just being rediscovered!?
Not only soybeans but a study by Palanisamy in 1999 showed that as the CO2 content of the atmosphere rises Eucalyptus seedlings exhibit increased rates of photosynthesis even during times of water stress.
The study showed that CO2-induced increases in photosynthesis will likely lead to greater biomass production, even when soil moisture is low, as during drought conditions. (Palanisamy, K. 1999. Interactions of elevated CO2 concentration and drought stress on photosynthesis in Eucalyptus cladocalyx F. Muell. Photosynthetica 36: 635-638.) http://www.co2science.org/articles/V3/N9/B1.php
This study may have future implications for the terrible fires in SE Australia where Eucalyptus forests are the norm. Perhaps our increasing CO2 atmospheric concentrations will one day be blessed for the higher food and biomass production it will provide!
The “Greening Earth” crew has been all over this for 20 years, I think…they were blasted for being tools of the oil industry.
Tree cores aren’t much good as thermometers, but I bet they would be good for measuring ambient co2 content from a 1000 years ago.
This seems like a really complicated, expensive, and not easily interpreted substitute for just weighing the plants after a season growing in either normal or increased CO2.
“Understanding how the respiratory pathway responds when plants are grown at elevated CO2 is key to reducing this uncertainty, Leakey said.”
Knowledge reduces ignorance.
And they folded up their tent, I meant to add. As someone mentioned above, Idso’s have been doing this research for decades, too. The press release makes it seem original.
Why are these people always experimenting with the odious soya bean? If we want to turn into a world of tofu-sucking, raffia-wearing, flatulent tree-huggers, the soya bean is just the thing. Far better is to encourage a proper diet in which flatulence is mainly emitted in the open air by animals that go moo, oink and baa rather than by us in our hermetically-sealed and insulated living rooms. I hate to think of the effect it has on those new twisty light bulbs that shed hardly any light but do so for decades.
You science people should encourage your fellows to do these tests on good sturdy potatoes, carrots and, if they have to, the occasional cabbage or asparagus. Concentrating on the soya bean sets a very poor example to children. There’s quite enough hippification and lentilisation going on already without adding to the poison.
REPLY: Soybeans are more than tofu, they are also a major source of a variety of industrial uses and derivatives. Being traded in future exchanges like the Chicago Board of Trade, it is not simply the “hippie food” you imagine it to be. – Anthony
It’s pretty obvious to me that rising CO2 levels will result in catastrophic plant growth resulting in the violent intrusion of hyperbolic plants into cities, we won’t be able to cope with rampant plants over-running us all…
Humans will have to migrate to small pockets of available habitation to preserve what’s left of civilization…
The only hope is to stop burning fossil fuels immediately…
Oh dang – I forgot that I’m not an alarmist…
More recently, a group of scientists has set up one of the largest climate change experiments in Australia. They’re trying to mimic conditions trees will face in the next 50 years. By housing trees in gigantic chambers with elevated CO2 levels, the scientists are hoping to measure how they’ll grow in their new environment.
They chose to use eucalypts in their experiments because Eucalyptus is the most important genus in Australia, and is probably most likely to be representative of how trees in Australia will respond to future climate change.
Some of the preliminary studies have indicated that the trees are responding positively… “They’re growing at about 30% or 40% more than plants exposed to ambient CO2” http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2001966.htm
They use schrubbed industrial flue gasses with elevated CO2 content in the greenhouses in Holland. Produces mighty big juicy tomatoes!
Now, wait just a minute! If higher CO2 levels increase plant growth, then will falling CO2 levels decrease them? Someone, please phone Arnold, our Governator of Kahl-ee-fohn-ya. He has the state embarked on a deadly path, it seems, through AB 32 aka Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. In it, CO2 will (note, that is SHALL) be reduced 30 percent by 2020! And furthermore, it SHALL be reduced another 80 percent by 2050!
Sound the Alarm! Our California trees, grass, shrubs, and agriculture will all die off from a lack of CO2!
Oh wait. What’s that I hear? In a sidebar, I was just informed that plants also need sunlight and water and nutrients to grow.
Well, there is plenty of sunshine, and lots of BS (of all kinds), but in California we don’t have enough water to grow stuff, anyway… never mind!
And to FatBigot, you are so correct in your analysis of soy products. It also appears they suppress testosterone, which could be a slight problem.
Roger E. Sowell
Marina del Rey, California
We know that plants strive to maintain a constant temperature, year-round. Vegetation has to have a “cooling” effect (in summer) on the atmosphere. Bigger plants would have a Greater cooling effect. The question is, “Is it enough to effect the atmosphere?
Wow. We are almost back to 7th Grade Science. Wonderful. Shouldn’t this be classified?