Harnessing plant agriculture to mitigate climate change: A framework to evaluate synthetic biology (and other) interventions

Summary

Plant agriculture contributes substantially to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet it also offers powerful opportunities for climate change mitigation. Here, we focus on how to identify and prioritize synthetic biology strategies to reduce emissions and sequester carbon through plant-based interventions. Effective solutions must process large volumes of carbon, be scalable, yield a positive life-cycle balance, and be economically viable, technically feasible, and deployable in field conditions without undue damage to what remains of nature on Earth. Using Fermi estimation, we quantify the per-hectare, annual, and 100-year CO2-equivalent (CO2e) drawdown potential of emerging synthetic biology strategies-including improved CO2 fixation, reduced yield losses, root-deposited biopolymers, engi