Professor Ben Davis FRS and Co-researchers Publish New Paper That Could Revolutionise Farming

Professor Ben Davis FRS (Pembroke Fellow and Tutor in Organic Chemistry) and his co-researchers have developed a crop spray that can dramatically increase a farmer’s wheat yields by a fifth. The journal ‘Nature’ recently published this significant research development.

The team of researchers have discovered that there is a molecule which helps plants to make the best use of the sugars generated during photosynthesis. The discovery is remarkable because it does not call for genetic modification, which campaigners argue is a potential health risk for consumers.

The spray uses a synthetic version of T6P, which is a crucial molecule in controlling how the wheat uses sucrose. The more T6P available to the plant during photosynthesis, the more sucrose it draws in and converts to starch, therefore enabling them to grow larger.

Prof. Davis remarked:

‘The tests we conducted show real promise for a technique that, in the future, could radically alter how we farm not just wheat but many different crops.

The Green Revolution in the 20th century was a period where more resilient, high-yield wheat varieties were created, an innovation that has been claimed to have helped save one billion lives.

By developing new chemical methods based on an understanding of biology, we can secure our food sources and add to this legacy.’

This exciting development has the potential to increase yields for a large number of crop varieties. Moreover, the spray has been found to increase the wheat plants’ ability to recover from drought.

The tests have thus far taken place inside labs, but the research team are keen to test the spray on fields to see if it will work in real-life practice, in much larger and more variable environments.

The research paper was published on 14th December, 2016 and can be found here. Their research has also gained recognition in the wider media, such as this article in the Telegraph.