[icegreentea]

C3 and C4 refer to different methods of photosynthesis. C4 confers advantages in sub optimal conditions - the most obvious form is growing in conditions of water stress.

Study authors show through a whole pile of methods that the grain part of wheat uses C4 like photosynthesis while the rest of the plant uses C3 (we previously had always just classified wheat as C3).

This is an additional piece of evidence that falls inline with a large spectrum of previous evidence pointing to relatively complex distribution of the spectrum of C3 to C4 traits. Other cases include finding C3 mechanisms in use in the leafs of the ears of corn (a C4 plant).

Authors end with the suggestion that since the C4-like genes are already present, it would then be easier to breed and/or engineer wheat varieties to using higher proportion of C4-like photosynthesis.

While the abstract calls out breeding specifically, the discussion calls out genetic manipulation. You can interpret that choice as you will.

[forgotpwtomain]

> C3 and C4 refer to different methods of photosynthesis. C4 confers advantages in sub optimal conditions - the most obvious form is growing in conditions of water stress.

It's been a while so I don't have a reference of the top of my head but [0] this is not correct. C4 plants will have better yield in any conditions where C3 plants reach light saturation - which applies to a lot of agricultural regions of central latitude.

[0] edit: Photosynthesis vs Irradiance graph from google images illustrating this: http://aciar.gov.au/files/mn-158/img/Figure_02.2.png