Leveraging Diversity in Environmental Driven Responses Reveals a Key Role for Mesophyll Conductance and Root Sink Strength Under Elevated CO(2) and Temperature.

Elevated CO2 (800 ppm) and higher temperature (34°C) show that mesophyll conductance and root sink strength drive banana growth, with e[CO2] linked to enhanced photosynthesis.

• Why it matters: Future climates will raise both CO2 and temperature, but trait mechanisms that jointly govern growth and photosynthetic capacity under combined conditions remain unclear.
• What they did: Using high-throughput phenotyping across 31 banana varieties, growth and gas-exchange traits were compared at 400 vs 800 ppm CO2 and 30°C vs 34°C, with ecotron validation.
• The result: Variation in mesophyll conductance (g m) and root sink strength drove growth under both a[CO2] and e[CO2], and e[CO2] counteracted supra-optimal temperature’s negative growth effect.