THE DAILY BEAST - In a paper published in the journal Nature Food on June 23, a team of researchers at University of California, Riverside and the University of Delaware have created an artificial method of photosynthesis that turns carbon dioxide, electricity, and water into acetate, an alternative chemical that plants can consume to grow instead of glucose. Using this method, the plants grew entirely in the dark and the study’s authors even found that the process was up to 18 times more efficient than the normal photosynthesis process for some plants.
“With our approach we sought to identify a new way of producing food that could break through the limits normally imposed by biological photosynthesis,” Robert Jinkerson, a UC Riverside assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering and co-author of the paper, said in a press release.