$45 Million for Photosynthesis Research

ifr170915–244
$45 Million for Photosynthesis Research
(R) IL 13th, Representative Rodney Davis - United States Congress

Last Friday (week / Sep 15, 2017), as Todd Gleason reports, political and agricultural leaders gathered on the University of Illinois campus to see transformative work by scientists in photo-synthetic efficiency.

Actually it’s a project called R.I.P.E (ripe)….
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Actually it’s a project called R.I.P.E.. That stands for Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency. It is a $45 million, five-year reinvestment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), and the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID). Illinois Congressman Rodney Davis, a member of the House of Representatives ag committee toured there research facilities, fields, and labs. He says he was impressed

(tv skip to soundbite #2).

Davis :41 …on less land to feed more people years from now.

Quote Summary - Yes, this was a great presentation, but really a celebration. A celebration of a public/private partnership; the Gates Foundation, the U.K.I.D., F-FAR, the University of Illinois, and USDA. This is why I enjoy being the subcommittee chairman on biotech, horticulture, and research. Because this research component means so much, not only to the University of Illinois and Land Grant Institutions like it, but also allows us to have money to partner with private foundations, like the Gates Foundation to really do what it necessary when it comes to research and photosynthesis. Their goal, the R.I.P.E. project, is to grow more food on less land to feed more people years from now.

This can be done by breeding, engineering plants to take more complete advantage of sunlight.

Davis :31 …is what we need to do.

Quote Summary - Absolutely, It is about increasing yields by understanding the photosynthesis process better. By doing that we are able to address a global food security problem that we are going to have, and currently have, in the world right now. It is only going to get worse when we have hundreds-of-millions of people over the next few years while being asked to grow more food on less land. So, you must have advances. That is what ag research does, that is what this public/private partnership does, and that is what we need to do.

On that note, there has been more emphasis on research dollars from congress this year than in the previous couple of decades. I asked the congressman why he thought that was the case.

Davis :23 …research projects like the R.I.P.E. project.

Quote Summary - I’d like to say it is because of the leadership on the subcommittee, but it is because we’ve really tried to put a focus on it as a congress and especially as a House Agriculture Committee. It is not just Title VII, the research title. This about making sure we address global food security issues and that we do it by partnership projects, and research projects like the R.I.P.E. project.

Rodney Davis is a member of the House of Representatives committee on agriculture. He was visiting the University of Illinois campus to explore the R.I.P.E. photosynthesis research funded in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

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The Deputy Director for R.I.P.E., Don Orr of the USDA/ARS says “R.I.P.E. has validated that photosynthesis can be engineered to be more efficient to help close the gap between the trajectory of yield increase and the trajectory of demand increase.”

Last year, in a study published in the journal Science, a R.I.P.E. team demonstrated one of these approaches could increase crop productivity by as much as 20 percent.