“Follow the Food’s focus on how to feed the growing world population aligns perfectly with RIPE. Here, an international consortium of leading research labs are focussed on improving the process of photosynthesis in crops, so that more of the sunlight energy reaching crop fields is converted into increased harvests, and these innovations also better prepare crops for the changing climate,” said RIPE Director Stephen Long, Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at Illinois’ Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB).

RIPE, which is led by the University of Illinois, is engineering crops to be more productive by improving photosynthesis, the natural process all plants use to convert sunlight into energy and yields. RIPE is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, and U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

During a visit to Illinois this summer, RIPE Deputy Director Lisa Ainsworth gave Wong a tour of several research plots and discussed how RIPE is working to improve the photosynthesis of crops to increase carbon intake.