Similar photosynthetic but different yield responses of C and C crops to elevated O.

The deleterious effects of ozone (O) pollution on crop physiology, yield, and productivity are widely acknowledged. It has also been assumed that C crops with a carbon concentrating mechanism and greater water use efficiency are less sensitive to O pollution than C crops. This assumption has not been widely tested.

Reductions in leaf area index, pod production, seed size, and harvest index drive yield loss to high temperatures in soybean.

Improvements in genetics, technology, and agricultural intensification have increased soybean yields; however, adverse climate conditions may prevent these gains from being fully realized in the future. Higher growing season temperatures reduce soybean yields in key production regions including the US Midwest, and better understanding of the developmental and physiological mechanisms that constrain soybean yield under high temperature conditions is needed. This study tested the response of two soybean cultivars to four elevated temperature treatments (+1.

The leaf economics spectrum of triploid and tetraploid C grass Miscanthus x giganteus.

The leaf economics spectrum (LES) describes multivariate correlations in leaf structural, physiological and chemical traits, originally based on diverse C species grown under natural ecosystems. However, the specific contribution of C species to the global LES is studied less widely. C species have a CO concentrating mechanism which drives high rates of photosynthesis and improves resource use efficiency, thus potentially pushing them towards the edge of the LES.

Testing unified theories for ozone response in C species.

There is tremendous interspecific variability in O  sensitivity among C  species, but variation among C  species has been less clearly documented. It is also unclear whether stomatal conductance and leaf structure such as leaf mass per area (LMA) determine the variation in sensitivity to O across species. In this study, we investigated leaf morphological, chemical, and photosynthetic responses of 22 genotypes of four C bioenergy species (switchgrass, sorghum, maize, and miscanthus) to elevated O in side-by-side field experiments using free-air O concentration enrichment (FACE).

Bioenergy sorghum maintains photosynthetic capacity in elevated ozone concentrations.

Elevated tropospheric ozone concentration (O ) significantly reduces photosynthesis and productivity in several C crops including maize, switchgrass and sugarcane. However, it is unknown how O affects plant growth, development and productivity in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.), an emerging C bioenergy crop.