As rising temperatures put growing pressure on a crop that helps sustain 800 million people, Lancaster University and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center are launching an ambitious effort to help cassava keep producing in a hotter world.
A $4,937,793 grant from the Gates Foundation will support HeatSmart Cassava, a four-year project to engineer and test a more heat-stable form of a protein that is essential to photosynthesis.
Cassava is a cornerstone of food security in sub-Saharan Africa. Smallholder farmers rely on the crop because it can produce dependable yields in marginal soils and during intermittent drought, when other crops may fail. Yet temperatures above cassava's optimal range can sharply reduce photosynthesis, lowering yields, and heat often arrives alongside drought-compounding the threat to productivity and livelihoods.
The project, titled HeatSmart Cassava: Enhancing Photosynthetic Efficiency for a Warmer Future, involves a team of plant science researchers at the Lancaster Environment Centre led by Professor of Crop Physiology Elizabete Carmo-Silva.
Other Lancaster University researchers involved include Dr Clay Dilks, Dr Marjorie Lundgren, and Professor Ian Dodd.
Professor Carmo-Silva said: "For the past decade we have been researching photosynthetic thermotolerance in crops to protect yields when plants experience heatwaves. We are excited to partner with colleagues at the Danforth Centre to translate our findings into such an important sub-Saharan food crop."
Dr Getu Duguma principal investigator at the Danforth Center, leads the project, with Dr Nigel Taylor, the Danforth Center's vice president for impact and Dorothy J. King Distinguished Investigator, serving as co-principal investigator.
"For millions of families, cassava is more than a crop-it is a safeguard against hunger when conditions are difficult," said Dr Duguma. "This grant gives us the opportunity to strengthen one of the crop's most heat-sensitive processes and test whether that change can help cassava continue turning sunlight into food when temperatures climb."
At the center of the work is Rubisco activase, a protein that keeps Rubisco-the enzyme plants use to capture carbon dioxide-working efficiently. Rubisco activase begins to lose function at high temperatures, creating a bottleneck in photosynthesis just when the plant is under the greatest stress.
Earlier machine-learning and protein-engineering research identified versions of cassava Rubisco activase that remained stable in laboratory tests. HeatSmart Cassava will take the critical next step: introducing promising changes into cassava plants and testing their performance under heat and combined heat-and-drought conditions.
Researchers will evaluate whether engineered plants can maintain photosynthetic efficiency, Rubisco activation, and yield at higher temperatures without sacrificing performance under normal conditions. The proof-of-concept study will also reveal whether strengthening Rubisco activase is sufficient on its own or must be paired with other traits. Either answer will provide a clearer path toward future heat-resilient cassava varieties for major cassava-growing regions of sub-Saharan Africa.
The collaboration brings together Lancaster University's leadership in photosynthesis, plant physiology, and protein engineering with the Danforth Center's expertise in cassava biotechnology, gene editing, and plant transformation.
In keeping with the Gates Foundation's Global Access policy, the team will publish findings through open-access channels, deposit engineered sequences in public databases and make project materials available in accordance with global access principles.
"A warming climate is already changing the conditions in which farmers must grow the food their families and communities depend on," said Danforth Center President Dr Giles Oldroyd. "HeatSmart Cassava reflects the heart of the Danforth Center mission: bringing leading-edge plant science to bear on urgent challenges and helping build a more food-secure future for all."
