Investigation of the photosynthetic development of 11648 hybrid (A. amaniensis x A. angustifolia)

• Grant number: 17/16834-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2017
• End date: October 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Genetics - Plant Genetics
• Principal Investigator: Gonçalo Amarante Guimarães Pereira
• Grantee: Maiki Soares de Paula
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Projections on global warming suggest a gradual increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather conditions such as droughts and high temperatures. An alternative to increase the water use efficiency (WUE) in agriculture is to engineer the CAM photosynthetic system in C3 crops. Crassulacean acid metabolism (CAM) is one of the three metabolic routes found in plants for the assimilation of atmospheric CO2. CAM is a temporally controlled plant inorganic carbon-concentrating mechanisms that maximizes WUE by shifting the CO2 uptake to the nighttime, when evapotranspiration rates are reduced compared with the daytime. Among the few CAM plants capable of achieving high productivity, stands out the genus Agave. In Agave, there is substantial evidence that the transition from C3 photosynthesis to CAM occurs naturally as leaf matures, however, this behavior has not yet been proven. Comparative analysis between C3 and CAM in high productivity plants is a crucial step to increase WUE through CAM bioengineering. In this aspect, agaves appear as a possible model for the study of these interactions since they possibly oscillate between the two types of photosynthesis. Therefore, this work aims to identify if this behavior occurs in the hybrid variety 11648 (A. amaniensis x A. angustifolia). (AU)