GREENSCALE

Major challenges are arising as we search for agricultural solutions that can mitigate these impacts and adapt crop farming, all while maintaining high levels of productivity. GREENSCALE has come up with an innovative mitigation strategy that focuses on reducing the nitrogen needs of crops while maintaining carbon levels. The project is targeting plant regulation of chlorophyll content, a natural process that underlies photosynthetic shifts prompted by environmental conditions. GREENSCALE will explore the idea that, when light is not limiting, specific adjustments to levels of chlorophyll b and its protein complexes can reduce soil nitrogen assimilation, canopy temperatures, and evapotranspiration, all without affecting carbon dioxide assimilation.

The project is the fruit of an innovative partnership between researchers at INRAE, CNRS, CEA, and ARVALIS. Its aim is to better understand the interactions between plant nitrogen nutrition and photosynthesis and both carbon and nitrogen cycling in the soil. Additionally, the project will develop plot-scale and environmental models. GREENSCALE will use non-GMO barley varieties with different chlorophyll contents to explore plant biological responses to drought and nitrogen. The project will use its findings to improve the accuracy of continental surface models, particularly when it comes to the natural variability observed for croplands and grasslands.

GREENSCALE’s results should help guide future crop breeding programmes, planting the seeds for more sustainable and resilient agricultural practices that can better handle environmental challenges and cereal production standards. The project is also part of a broader effort to better structure integrated research on photosynthesis in France. It will bridge the gap between photosynthesis research that takes a molecular and cellular approach versus an environmental and agronomic approach. In this way, the project will strive to promote collaboration among scientific fields and bring together complementary approaches, thus transcending disciplinary borders.

As a result, GREENSCALE is an innovative project that is simultaneously conducting cutting-edge research, fostering institutional partnerships, and making a commitment to sustainable, resilient agricultural solutions to global environmental challenges.