A team from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has engineered potato to be more resilient to global warming, showing 30% increases in tuber mass under heatwave conditions. This adaptation may provide greater food security for families dependent on potatoes, as these are often the same areas where the changing climate has already affected multiple crop seasons.

“We need to produce crops that can withstand more frequent and intense heatwave events if we are going to meet the population’s need for food in regions most at risk from reduced yields due to global warming,” said Katherine Meacham-Hensold, scientific project manager for the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) at Illinois. "The 30% increase in tuber mass observed in our field trials shows the promise of improving photosynthesis to enable climate-ready crops."

Read more from the RIPE Project.