Study finds some crops tolerate ozone pollution better than others
ozone pollution, according to a study that opens the door to better models for predicting crop responses to the effects of climate change. The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also pave the way for developing more resilient varieties that can sustain humanity's increasing demand for food, feed, fibre and fuel.
A team of scientists at Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), US found that the so-called «C4» crops like corn and sorghum tolerate increased ozone levels better than «C3» crops, like rice or snap beans.
A crop is designated as C3 or C4 depending on whether the CO2 it captures from the air is initially converted into a 3-carbon or 4-carbon compound, they said.
The general ability of C4 crops to tolerate increases in ground-level (or «tropospheric») ozone better than C3 crops has long been suspected but not widely tested under actual field conditions, said Lisa Ainsworth, a research molecular biologist at ARS.
Together with ARS research plant physiologist Christopher Montes and a UIUC team led by Shuai Li-Ainsworth conducted an extensive analysis of both published and unpublished data.
They culled the first dataset from 46 journal papers and the second set from 20 years' worth of open-air experiments conducted in the US, India and China.
Their analysis focused on the responses of five C3 crops (chickpea, rice, snap bean, soybean and wheat) and four C4 crops (sorghum, corn, giant miscanthus and switchgrass) to both ambient levels of ozone and increased concentrations of the gas, ranging from 40 to 100 parts per billion.
