A University of Illinois-led collaboration called RIPE, Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency, is working to help plants become heartier in a world where the frequency and severity of droughts may require them to be more resilient—particularly for humans needing to stave off starvation.

All children in school learn about photosynthesis—the process by which plants use light to convert carbon dioxide into energy—and RIPE is breaking down each step in the natural solar-powered assembly line to see whether or not various systems can be improved.

Previous discoveries, along with their recent study, suggest that hacking into a few key photosynthetic processes could improve plant yields by more than 50%.

"Like a factory line, plants are only as fast as their slowest machines," said Patricia Lopez-Calcagno, a postdoctoral researcher at partner school University of Essex, who led this most recent project for RIPE. "We have identified some steps that are slower, and what we're doing is enabling these plants to build more machines to speed up these slower steps in photosynthesis."