Centre for Water and Spatial Science

☀️ Plants convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into the organic carbon that sustains nearly all life on Earth. This process, photosynthesis, drives terrestrial carbon fixation and underpins global crop productivity.

📈 As the human population grows, improving photosynthetic efficiency offers one of the most promising routes to increasing agricultural production.

🌡️ But at the same time, agriculture is facing increasing abiotic stress from global climate change, including rising temperatures and more frequent heatwaves.

💡 In this public talk, UWA Gledden Visiting Fellow, photosynthesis expert Dr Amanda Cavanaugh will examine how carbon assimilation responds to heat stress and rising atmospheric CO₂, and discuss strategies to improve photosynthetic performance through genetic manipulation and natural acclimation responses.

🌿 Dr Cavanagh will consider how rising atmospheric CO₂ may alter the biochemical control within a leaf, and explore strategies to study the long-term response to this.

🌾 Together, these studies highlight the potential to harness both natural and engineered metabolic flexibility to prepare crops for the environmental conditions expected later this century.

Register to attend the talk 👉 https://zurl.co/ZSU4u

Dr Amanda Cavanagh is Director of the Plant Productivity Research Group at the University of Essex. Find out more 👉 https://zurl.co/7bsYJ

The University of Western Australia's Gledden Visiting Fellowships with the Institute of Advanced Studies support global research collaborations. Find out more here 👉 https://zurl.co/qiZrS

UWA School of Agriculture and Environment UWA Institute of Advanced Studies UWA School of Biological Sciences

Public Talk - Eating the Sun: the chemistry that feeds the planet Dr Amanda Cavanaugh, Director of the Plant Productivity Research Group at the University of Essex will discuss strategies to improve photosynthetic performance.