Three University professors received a $5.7 million grant from the National Science Foundation on Jan. 1 to research the effects of ground-level ozone on corn.

Lisa Ainsworth, associate professor in integrative biology and principal investigator on the grant, said the goal of this five-year project is to develop an ozone-tolerant variety of corn.

Ainsworth said ozone, a pollutant, enters a plant through small pores in its leaves and damages it in multiple ways.

“Ozone concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled since preindustrial times,” Ainsworth said. “This is a relatively new pollutant that plants are facing, and it’s something that is decreasing yields.”

Ainsworth will be working with two other professors — Andrew Leakey, assistant professor in plant biology, and Patrick Brown, assistant professor in crop sciences.

Brown, geneticist for the project, said they will look for differences in the phenotypes, or physical characteristics, of the ozone-treated and untreated corn.

“We’re going to calculate values for every trait because we’re interested in lines that don’t show a big difference between the two,” Brown said. “This means they are dealing with the ozone pretty well.”

The end goal of the project is to cross the most ozone-tolerant corn with the least ozone-tolerant to create a variation that will be resistant to ozone and give an increased yield.

The team members are part of the genomic ecology of global change set of laboratories at the Institute of Genomic Biology, led by Don Ort. The research in these laboratories focuses on how change in climate and other global factors will affect agricultural practices.

“It’s known that there is natural genetic variability so that some cultivars (variations) of corn are more sensitive to this pollution,” Ort said. “But, it hasn’t been possible up until now to systematically transfer that resistance into the kinds of corn that farmers want to grow.”

Ort said the problem with ozone was that it is a secondary pollutant, meaning it is formed by reactions from primary pollutants, and is short-lived, as ozone’s strength changes from day to day and from place to place. However, with the facilities at the University, the researchers can keep the ozone levels constant.

Ainsworth and Leakey, physiologists for the project, have both worked on soyFACE, which stands for Soybean Free Air Concentration Enrichment. The research project, located on the South Farms, examines the genetic variations of soybeans once sprayed with concentrated levels of ozone.

“What soybean seems to do is increase its antioxidant metabolism in response to ozone,” Ainsworth said. “That’s energetically quite expensive for plants, so then there’s a penalty on growth.”

In the 80-acre field where soyFACE is located, 40 acres will be converted to a plot containing 200 variations of corn and the rest will remain for soybean research. There are eight total ozone plots on which the corn and soybeans will be tested.

Ainsworth said the search for ozone-tolerant plants will begin this summer and will also double as a plant biology camp for junior high school girls.

Ort said he was excited about the prospects of the project.

“All three of these people are early career and are either assistant or associate professors,” Ort said. “This NSF genome program is incredibly competitive and so to get it is a real endorsement of these three faculty members.”

Claire can be reached at [email protected].