Ozone (O3 ) is a damaging air pollutant to crops. As one of the most reactive oxidants known, O3 rapidly forms other reactive oxygen species (ROS) once it enters leaves through stomata. Those ROS in turn can cause oxidative stress, reduce photosynthesis, accelerate senescence, and decrease crop yield. To improve and adapt our feed, fuel, and food supply to rising O3 pollution, a number of Free Air Concentration Enrichment (O3 -FACE) facilities have been developed around the world and have studied key staple crops. In this review, we provide an overview of the FACE facilities and highlight some of the lessons learned from the last two decades of research. We discuss the differences between C3 and C4 crop responses to elevated O3 , the possible trade-off between productivity and protection, genetic variation in O3 response within and across species, and how we might leverage this observed variation for crop improvement. We also highlight the need to improve understanding of the interaction between rising O3 pollution and other aspects of climate change, notably drought. Finally, we propose the use of globally modeled O3 data that are available at increasing spatial and temporal resolutions to expand upon the research conducted at the limited number of global O3 -FACE facilities.
Keywords: air pollution; free air concentration enrichment; genetic variation; oxidative stress response.
© 2021 The Authors. The Plant Journal published by Society for Experimental Biology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.