Can crops become more efficient?

Michigan State, Eastern Michigan researchers have won a grant to probe a natural process that saps plants’ productivity

Plants were evolving for hundreds of millions of years before humans started cultivating them for food.

So when the first farmers showed up some 12,000 years ago, plants had already picked up some inefficiencies — that is, adaptations that helped the plants survive but also limited their productivity as crops.

Today, some of those inefficiencies appear to be getting worse as the planet warms.

Read the full story at MSUToday.