Working with nature to improve crops

Making plants more efficient

About Capitalise

CAPITALISE is an EU funded Horizon 2020 project. We are combining science and innovation to improve photosynthesis for higher yielding crops.

The problem

Our approach

Our solutions

Our impact

Our objectives

What do we want to achieve?

We aim to exploit natural variation in core elements of photosynthesis to identify and develop new genetic resources and support tools.

These outcomes will then be used to improve the photosynthesis of core crop plants to increase yields. Our approach will form the basis for a science and innovation roadmap to kick start a targeted plant breeding programme for Europe 2030.

The CAPITALISE project

CAPITALISE is a large, complex and highly innovative programme.

We will translate world leading state of the art work on key photosynthesis traits from laboratory proof of concept studies using model plants, towards a European crop breeding programme demonstrating more than 10% increase in crop yields.

To achieve this ambition requires several highly innovative steps to advance the scientific and industrial applications.

We will capitalise on the three most promising strategies identified in model plants to discover the genetic resources needed to improve the photosynthetic properties of crop plants.

The latest news

Phenotyping the Magic Maize Population

Take the time to appreciate all the hard work that is goes in to improving crops. Johannes Kromdijk’s group at Cambridge University show how they carry out their extensive phenotyping for photosynthetic traits in the MAGIC Maize population in this video. Video...

Photosynthesis as a tool in global change research.

W. Thomas, SBR, CNRS-Sorbonne Université Understanding the effects of global warming, harvesting and land-use changes for local carbon fluxes is crucial for managing global emission scenarios. The flows of carbon between different organisms, their metabolic fluxes...

Consortium Meeting and project review in Cambridge September 18th

The latest CAPITALISE consortium meeting was held in Cambridge in mid-September. The 19 Partners organisations presented their progress, which stimulated much discussion and future planning. It was great to see the collaboration between the consortium members...