PHOTOSYNTHETICA

Photosynthetica X:X | DOI: 10.32615/ps.2026.029

Bioengineering photosynthesis to cope with combined stresses for future climates

P. YUN¹, S. SHABALA^{1, 2, 3}

¹ School of Biological Sciences and ARC Training Centre for Smart and Sustainable Horticulture, University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia

² College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, 430070 Wuhan, China

³ International Research Center for Environmental Membrane Biology, Foshan University, 528000 Foshan, China

Global climate change is leading to a challenging environment for agriculture. With more frequent and severe weather extremes, agricultural systems will need to deal with complex combinations of abiotic stresses under future climate scenarios. In this review, we discuss four types of combined stresses likely to occur in the foreseeable future and their impacts on plant photosynthesis. We also briefly review progress and bioengineering targets for improving photosynthesis under such future scenarios, focusing on transcription factors, the trehalose 6-phosphate pathway, light reactions, and the Calvin-Benson-Bassham cycle of photosynthesis. We then proposed several promising directions for engineering photosynthesis with enhanced stress tolerance, focusing on thermostability, ionic and redox homeostasis, and stomatal operation. Finally, we discuss two plausible strategies to guide bioengineering of photosynthesis to enhance crop stress tolerance: employing natural tolerance mechanisms and/or de novo design of enhanced chloroplast proteins. We argue that more attention should be paid to bioengineering photosynthesis resilience to stress conditions.

Additional key words: chloroplast bioengineering; combined stress tolerance; drought; flooding; heat; salinity.

Received: June 4, 2026; Revised: September 9, 2026; Accepted: September 10, 2026; Prepublished online: October 22, 2026