cam plants

Photosynthesis

Marvelous choreography

Photons and water, cohorts playing Merlin

Sequestered atmospheric carbon,

Is sweet hydrated carbon

Carbon, scaffold

Lego blocks that living Beings play.

Plants are key players in any healthy biota. They transform atmospheric inorganic carbon to a organic carbon that is easily downloadable to the rest of the food web. Humanity’s food security, dependent on mono crops like soya, corn, wheat and rice is threatened by climate change and the availability of water sources for their irrigation. The crops mention above follow a C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathway which needs regular water availability. The norm with climate change are irregular rain patterns, and an increase of global temperatures, aquifers are bring depleted. We need to plan ahead.

Crassulacean Acid Metabolism plants follow a different photosynthetic pathway, one that evolved to be successful in the type of environment we are facing. Their stomata, tiny openings that allow the exchange of gases open at night when the temperatures are cooler, sequester the atmospheric carbon and store it as malic acid, during the day when temperatures rise, they close the stomata minimizing water lose through perspiration and complete their photosynthetic cycle.

Mexico holds the most diverse concentration on cam-plants in the planet and humans here for millennia have been successful in incorporating them as food sources and in many other useful applications that need to be shared .

Regenerative design that incorporates cam-plants in arid regions can help restore food security in conflict ridden regions around the globe. Same regions that are now triggering mass migrations to northern latitudes caused by the underlying consequence of loss of livelihood.

The agave and cactus are an important part of the xeric grasslands and scrublands ecosystems, they give nourishment and shelter to a myriad of organisms, help water retention and can be used as anchors to slow erosion, help soil formation and sequester carbon in environments that by nature have slow carbon cycles.

We invite you to are site cam-plants.com , it’s an effort of the civil society to bring awareness of the importance of CAM plants in the current dialogue of climate change, link academics, farmers and the public in general to help promote the propagation of indigenous varieties of CAM plants around the globe and incorporate them to the food cycle..