Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) Project

New Capabilities

As of May 2026: Conducting field trials of photosynthesis-improved crops; complementary to IGI approach

Plants have used the same photosynthesis machinery for hundreds of millions of years, converting just 1 to 2 percent of sunlight into energy. UC Berkeley's Innovative Genomics Institute has published a method using CRISPR edits to boost photosynthesis protein output by more than 30-fold without inserting foreign DNA.

Updated May 31