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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PS. In the Gippsland region of Victoira, the fire WAS started by arsonists. At the start of this w/e, no significant fires other than those known. Starurday, and Saturday night, fire storm. Now, the Police consider 50% started by arsonists in Victoria.
NSW, two fires confirmed started by arsonists. One man arrested on Saturday over one fire, was released. On Sunday, the same man arrested and confirmed arsonist for another. On Sunday, a young man arrested for starting a fire.
I get the feeling that some arsonists would start fires, some ex-fire staff, knowing the risks. To me, IMO, I feel these have been politically motivated. Meaning some nutter wants action on climate change, so what better tool to use that a disaster.
I live in Sydney.
JimB (03:03:12) :
E.M. Smith:
“We need to start an immediate program of “Bunny Offsets”. Each person can send me $100/year for each bunny rabbit to be released into the wide in their name.”
E.M….taking your lead from Al? Getting in on the ground floor?…building a “bunny offset trading market” all in the name of CO2-enhancement?”
Think we have already started!
Who is going to look after all your ill sick bunny rabbits?
You did not think of that did you?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7878548.stm
Yes a special BUNNY DOCTOR.
Edinburgh University has the first Bunny Doctor.
Who are you going to call?
Bunny Doctor!!!
This was part of our news program last night.
Well the weather is cold and there is snow about, so we cannot get the usual global warming alarmist warnings.
Kaboom (01:23:58)
“If you are really, really lucky, the fire-front (and bio-fuel conflagration) will rip by you so quickly, that the fire is gone down the valley in a few seconds. However, it is the incredibly intense heat (and of course embers sucked by cyclonic winds under eaves and into roof-spaces) that starts the fires in residences, and unfortunately kills people.”
“A very sad time for my country.”
I lived in Australia (NSW) for 24 years. They are great people but some times irritatingly naive. The bush is a beautiful place to live but extremely dangerous. I have seem wooden homesteads built on rising escarpments with trees above and below. These places are death traps.
If you look at the destruction in Victoria you will see homes with Eucalypti in the surrounding garden and the bush. If you must live in these areas then planning and management of the risks is vital. No more crap from the greenies. Homesteads need a wide buffer zone and the surrounding bush regular burn back.
“the billions have arrived, and lo, we’re feeding them” (Mike McMillan)
Are you sure? I take your general point, but IIRC, about a third of the world goes to bed hungry.
WRT CO2, greenhouse growers have been pumping extra CO2 to stimulate growth for decades. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it…
The greenies always told me that the increase of CO2 itself is not the problem but the RATE of increase since plants can’t adjust as fast. Never mind that in Holland the tomatoes grew better from the very moment CO2 was added to the greenhouses. No surprise that soy beans react the same.
So yes, Malcolm (03:06:58) would you say makes sense.
different plants react differently to raised CO2.
different plants react differently to raised CO2 under different conditions.
plants react differently in the open than under indoor conditions.
in short, the effect of CO2 increase on food production is a MINOR one.
ps: adding a tiny amount of CO2 in a greenhouse is just one of the MANY weird things they do there. i doubt that anyone will claim, that it is a major part of their success..
REPLY: Gosh, it sounds then like we need a CO2 “surge”. – Anthony
Having lived in Victoria in the 1980s I know from experience the huge damage done by bush fires, most delibrately lit by fire bugs.
What I didn’t know was that the bush fires of 2009 was a tragedy waiting to happen because of green legislation.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25031389-5015664,00.html
It would appear that environmentalism has played a large part in this tragedy.
“MartinGAtkins (02:44:46) :
FatBigot (21:12:52) :
“Why are these people always experimenting with the odious soya bean?””
Because this is the U of Illinois not Idaho. Soy and Corn were certainly the two most grown crops when I lived there.
Interesting study, supplements all the greenhouse data on CO2 effects by doing it in the open air weather, plus the genetics side which I’m sure was not done 40 years ago. It also sounds like much of the research was aimed not at the normal CO2 in O2 out cycle but the CO2 out side of the equation.
FatBigot (21:12:52) :
“Why are these people always experimenting with the odious soya bean?”
Soya is interesting (for farmers and scientists) because it does not need oil-dependent-high-priced N fertilizer (as Leguminosae) to grow.
Bill McClure (02:21:16) :
“Nice to see research related to CO2 that doesn’t have the typical global warming disclamer.”
Indeed. But the study states in this conclusion:
Although the effects of elevated [CO2] on photosynthesis are well represented in models, the simulation of respiration has been hampered by our poor understanding of the mechanisms of response. This is an important source of uncertainty in models of plant carbon balance and crop yield (3), and
ecosystem carbon balance and the global carbon cycle (7). At the leaf and plant scales, stimulated respiration at elevated [CO2] will reduce net carbon balance.
However, it is possible that enhanced respiration could facilate increased yield, by providing greater energy for export of photoassimilate from source leaves
to sink tissues. Because leaf respiration is between 1/3 and half of global autotrophic respiration [20–30 PgCy-1 (6)], if many other species respond similarly to soybean, greater respiration at elevated [CO2] could offset the stimulation of photosynthesis and net primary productivity significantly.
Nice to know (I think):
Interesting it is, that not only are plants growing better at higher CO2 concentrations, but this extra-growth effect is especially big for areas in need for water. (See David Archibalds fantastic writings).
But WHY?? Why is it that plant especially in deserts are having a good helping hand from CO2? The answer is, that to obtain CO2, plants need to open their pores. thereby they lose water… So, for these plants, more CO2 is a very needed help to save water!
Nice, isn’t it?
Can anyone see the tipping points here?
a) Increased plant weight disproportionally “favors” the Northern Hemisphere which changes our orbital precession from the current 25,000 year period.
b) Worse still is the disproportionately greater plant weight over Asia. This creates increased crustal stresses due to the eccentric force’ orbital imbalance impact. ..increased crustal stresses….increased volcanism…. more CO2…. more plant growth…more volcanism… It’s downright scary to think about.
Falling CO2 levels will decrease plant growth. I think I read the threshold was 200 ppm. Another reason why global cooling is more difficult to adapt to than global warming. The cooling oceans will absorb immense amounts of atmospheric CO2.
I also read that increase co2 will enhance initial plant growth but that an increased availability of nitrogen through the roots will be necessary to sustain growth. Plants will grow faster but not necessarily larger.
Yesterday, in the Venus thread I talked about how since Cretaceous times plants will have evolved progressively more efficient mechanisms to utilize CO2 and this is the reason atmospheric CO2 levels have declined to current levels. CO2 levels stabilize around the lowest level plants can utilize CO2.
What this study has found is mechanisms to utilize higher levels of CO2 are still in plants waiting to be switched on when higher levels of CO2 are available. Note these mechanisms do not function at ‘normal’ CO2 levels.
This strongly indicates that substantially higher levels of CO2 were available in relatively recent times -less than a million years ago and perhaps less than 10,000 years ago.
How quickly genetic mechanisms no longer of value get ‘discarded’ is poorly understood, but 90 genes of no value at ‘normal’ levels of CO2 that are ready to be switched on, means higher levels of CO2 were available recently on evolutionary timescales.
It further indicates there are big surges of CO2 into the atmosphere. Otherwise, plants would consume the additional CO2 as fast as it is produced and the plant mechanisms that work at higher levels would never get used (and hence would be eliminated by natural selection).
This study says to me that the Earth periodically experiences surges of CO2 into its atmosphere (likely from volcanos) comparable to the current CO2 amounts produced by human activity.
E.M.Smith (22:26:34) :
No, no – see the phrase “hyperbolic plants”? Those are plants that grow at an hyperbolic rate. Such curves look exponential but when the growth really takes of, you’ll see that the doubling starts to come down. When that happens it’s too late – you’re very close to the asymptote where the curve heads to infinity. This is called the singularity, see Vernor Vinge’s The Peace Wars or Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity Is Near. Now, this is nothing like a Hansian Tipping Point(tm), it’s more like a brick wall. You’ll be driving through that city, take a left turn toward the park, and run into a 6′ (2m) tree trunk. Before you can shift into reverse, a 3′ (1m) tree will grow up behind you.
These are scary, scary times. Even if everyone buys paper versions of those books instead of the Kindle version, it will save us only a millisecond or two.
-Ric
P.S. The only edible form of tofu is Chinese Hot & Sour soup.
“ps: adding a tiny amount of CO2 in a greenhouse is just one of the MANY weird things they do there. i doubt that anyone will claim, that it is a major part of their success…”
I am hereby proclaimimg that CO2 IS a major part of the success of greenhouses.
It seems like you just put some plants in an airtight room with known CO2 and watch rates of change? I wonder why they make it sound like a question of whether plant growth increases? This my favorite reason why AGW alarmists should settle down.
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I was able to run one of the Antaractic temp reconstructions last night. Since I don’t know the parameters used I was forced to guess. In most cases of my reconstruction the antarctic is cooling again.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/deconstructing-a-reconstruction-of-temperature-trend/
It’s not my fault they refuse to give the data and code.
If God had meant us to be vegetarian, he would not have made animals out of meat. Besides, if we did not eat all this meat, how much MORE methane would these uneaten living pork chops and beef patties produce?
Jeff: ” was able to run one of the Antaractic temp reconstructions last night. Since I don’t know the parameters used I was forced to guess. In most cases of my reconstruction the antarctic is cooling again.
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/deconstructing-a-reconstruction-of-temperature-trend/
It’s not my fault they refuse to give the data and code.”
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Yup and do they even acknowledge that the outcome of their flawed data and flawed calculations is the fact that the Antarctic has indeed been cooling after all? NOPE! and even if they were, reluctantly, forced into such an admission, would the mainstream media even report it? The BBC would avoid such an admission like the plague!
Folks seem to be misreading this news release. The researcher was looking at plant respiration, not photosynthesis. Respiration in plants is essentially the same as in animals: it uses O2 and releases CO2. The chemical pathways may be somewhat different, but the final result is the same – release of chemical energy for cell-building processes and release of CO2. Plant respiration occurs continually, but is overwhelmed by photosynthesis during the day so there is a net uptake of CO2. At night without photosynthetic biochemistry going on (excepting some dark reactions) there is only respiration and a net release of CO2. This study is trying to figure out the genetic controls of respiration with elevated CO2 levels. It really isn’t too surprising that respiration would increase by 37% when the ambient CO2 is increased by 45%. An ultimate goal of such research would be to find plants with the most efficient photosynthesis:respiration ratio. Such plants could produce greater crop yields, although my guess would be that nature has pretty well worked out the optimum by now without human help.
Philip_B (05:13:17) : re plants genetically being able to kick up a gear re the use of elevated levels of CO2.
If this is indeed the case and plants can switch on a gene that allows greater uptake of CO2 when the level is correct, then we should soon start to see a leveling off of the current atmospheric concentrations of CO2 shouldn’t we? Or is this a process that takes a much longer time, and if so how long would it be before the atmospheric concentrations of CO2 start levelling off to a sustained level. (assuming that plants will not soak up more than the increased levels)
At what level of concentration does this ability for plants to soak up more CO2 kick in? We are currently at approximately 380ppm of CO2. So how high would that figure have to rise for this natural mechanism to kick in?
“We get some wild marijuana in the fields here and there. The cows eat the buds and leaves, but leave the stems.”
WOW! I know Peta wants animals treated nicely, but getting cows stoned is going one beyand the call of duty. Luck cows though!!
Strangely… on topic
“As the year draws to a close, FAO’s latest estimates confirm that a new record high level of global cereal production was achieved in 2008, sufficient to cover the expected increase in utilization in 2008/09 and also allow for a moderate replenishment of world reserves.”
…”As evidence of some improvement in the current season (2008/09), from the particularly tight market situation in 2007/08, the ratio of world cereal ending stocks in 2008/09 to the trend world cereal utilization in the following season is expected to increase significantly to 22.0 percent.”…
http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/ai476e/ai476e01.htm
Sea ice at highest level in at least 8 years!
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
This study is obviously flawed, and funded by Big Oil, since it makes no mention of how BAD our alarmingly-elevated C02 levels are for our planet, which will cause increasingly severe droughts, floods, fires, insect and pest invasions, and continued loss of eco-diversity and extinction. In addition to Big Oil and tobacco science skeptics, I blame the teachers for not sufficiently instilling in Mr. Leakey the concept that one must continually and diligently try to keep the public alarmed and informed of the likelihood of a climate catastrophe at all times, especially now since the people don’t seem to be getting the message. Sarc/off
While I have previously been skeptical of the degree to which man has contributed to the rise in C02 levels, I have now changed my mind, and admit that we are 100% responsible. As such, we are also responsible for the resultant 15% increase in plant growth which has occurred, and will surely be responsible for continued increases in plant growth in the future, with the resultant increases in food supplies. Maybe we’re not so bad after all (though, of course, we do still need to continue our anti-pollution efforts).