Using cutting-edge tech, a new center is studying climate change effects on a basic element of human survival—food.
Penn is well-known for its broad spectrum of initiatives to address climate change, but one significant piece was missing until recently: the study of how changing weather patterns affect the world’s plants and, by extension, its food supply.
“There are a lot of initiatives focused on energy, economics, design, and various other really important disciplines, but we lacked a living organism or biology component,” says Doris Wagner, the University’s DiMaura Professor of Biology and director of the Plant Adaptability and Resilience Center, known as Plant ARC. Launched in October by the School of Arts & Sciences, Plant ARC’s mission is to develop research-based methods to boost plant resilience and food security in ecosystems facing extreme heatwaves, droughts, and floods.
Rising temperatures and unpredictable precipitation are changing the way plants develop and reproduce, raising questions about the future of global agriculture. Plant ARC is committed to developing plants with long-lasting resilience that can adapt to environments disrupted by climate change.
Certain crops that sustain the planet are in particular trouble, according to climate models by scientific environmental organizations. In the United States, the country’s two biggest crops are expected to suffer significant losses in coming decades, with corn harvests expected to drop by 13 to 60 percent and soybean harvests falling by as much as 57 percent by 2050, Wagner says. Globally, climate models predict a reduction in corn yield by 25 percent by 2050.
“Crop failures are due to excessive water loss and wilting. This can lead to plant death, loss of much of its foliage, or poor seed set, which is especially frequent in hot and dry conditions,” Wagner explains. “These events are even more devastating if they occur when crops are about to set seed, because it leads to the loss of an entire cropping cycle.” Additional crop losses are expected because elevated temperatures in warmer latitudes distort growing cycles. In some places where two harvests per year were possible, now only one harvest is occurring because the climate has become too hot or dry to yield a second harvest.
Plant ARC aims to improve specific traits to make crops that feed people and animals more resistant to climate extremes. The center will build on existing research to advance plant adaptability and resilience in the Brassicaceae family, including leafy vegetables like kale, collards, and cabbages; Fabaceae family, including beans, peas, and alfalfa; and Poaceae family, including corn, rice, wheat, and sorghum, as well as grasses consumed by grazing animals.
Anchored in the Department of Biology, Plant ARC has seven labs where researchers study plants’ fundamental processes to improve their architecture and yield, enhance adaptability and resilience to changing climates, and understand the mechanisms by which plants survive stress, among other goals. Plans are underway to construct a building for the center, which currently has seven faculty and three staff members drawn from the biology department. Plant ARC will need the extra space—future research will be conducted using six walk-in programmable plant growth chambers called phytotrons.
Wagner says phytotrons allow researchers to manipulate climate scenarios by adding, adjusting, and removing variables. Programmable variables include daily temperature fluctuations; air and soil humidity and water content; carbon dioxide levels; light changes during the day and season; and changes in ultraviolet radiation levels due to fluctuations in the ozone layer, she adds.
Plant ARC is currently using three refrigerator-sized phytotron prototypes to conduct research until the larger growth chambers are built to its specifications. In addition to allowing researchers to test different climate scenarios, the larger phytotrons will have groundbreaking new capabilities, such as the ability to add ultraviolet A and B radiation levels; draw on eight different spectrums of light color to mimic dawn, dusk, and seasonal light changes; and change humidity over a large temperature gradient. “All of these are major engineering feats that enable the phytotrons to reproduce climates precisely,” Wagner says. “We’ve really tried to push the envelope.”
Meanwhile, Plant ARC is establishing its place among Penn’s other climate change initiatives through interdisciplinary partnerships. In its first event in November 2024, Plant ARC convened a “Climate Solutions for the Living World” symposium featuring speakers from the School of Arts & Sciences, Weitzman School of Design, Perelman School of Medicine, the School of Veterinary Medicine, and the School of Engineering and Applied Science.
“I’ve learned so much about other initiatives at the University that are of interest to us,” says Wagner, noting that the opportunities to collaborate will help Plant ARC contribute to mitigating climate change problems. “There are so many areas of overlap where we can work together. That’s made the campus for me a completely different landscape.”
— Samantha Drake CGS’06
