Amanta Seifried

Cassava storage roots are a vital source of calories across sub-Saharan Africa, with about one billion people worldwide depending on cassava as their primary staple food. Yet, despite its importance, actual cassava yields fall far below their potential. At the same time, climate projections suggest that by 2100, cassava could lose up to half of the land best suited for its cultivation. To ensure future food security, it is therefore crucial to find sustainable ways to increase cassava yield per area.

One promising approach lies in improving photorespiration in cassava. Carbon fixation is carried out by ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO). However, this enzyme is slow and error-prone: Its reaction with oxygen leads to the loss of 25% of the previously fixed carbon through the process of photorespiration.  Our research aims to overcome this inefficiency by introducing a synthetic “new-to-nature” photorespiration bypass called “tartronyl-CoA (TaCo) pathway” that reduces photorespiratory losses. To this end, we want to implement and test the carbon-negative TaCo bypass in cassava, developing transgenic lines and evaluating their photosynthetic performance as a strategy to increase storage root yield.