Follow the link to read the article, Making better rice: The C4 Pathway.

To go directly to YouTube to watch the video, follow the link: Making Better Rice: The quest to feed the world by hacking plant evolution.

Many congratulations to Julian Hibberd on being elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). See more here.

We are delighted to hear that Julian Hibberd has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and wish him many congratulations.

We just had a great catch-up meeting in Bangkok. For the first time, members of the C4 Rice team got together with members of our Gates Funded ‘C4 Project Offshoots’ team who aim to test some of the outputs from the C4 rice project in the field.

The von Caemmerer and Furbank labs have been in charge of building the metabolic prototype in rice since the project’s inception. Susanne today stepped back for a well deserved retirement with a celebration in her garden.

The C4 Rice ANU team celebrating 15 years of achievements in Susanne’s garden (from left to right: Bob Furbank, Fahim Nawaz, Susanne von Caemmerer, Kelly Chapman, Kavya Yalamanchili, Florence Danila, Jing Zhang and Ding Yuan)

An online meeting yesterday of all the groups engaged in Phase IV of the project highlighted just how much progress has been made but also how much there is still to be done. It was great to see everyone, albeit virtually, and we look forward to driving forward the most promising lines over the next 18 months.

BMGF have approved funding for 18 months beyond the end of Phase IV (to May 2026). We look forward to following up the most promising lines and positioning the project for its next stage of development.

Great annual meeting again. Lots of exciting science – very interesting papers coming in 2024.