Croce Lab

Research focus

ERC Advanced Grant · 2023

Photosynthesis in far-red: from cyanobacteria to plants

Photosynthesis, the process that sustains life on our planet by generating food and supplying oxygen, is astonishingly inefficient: less than 1% of accessible solar energy is converted into biomass by a crop. Improving photosynthesis is thus a promising approach to meet the increasing demand for food production. The capacity to optimally harness light is a crucial factor in the photosynthetic process, especially in light-limited environments. However, plants only utilize the visible part of the solar spectrum (400-700 nm), which results in more than 50% of the photons reaching the Earth’s surface being discarded. This represents an important limitation, especially for crops, as plants in…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.