Lifting the limits on Chinese crop production: Quantifying and mitigating ozone damage

China is particularly susceptible to the deleterious effects of air pollution on crops. The livelihoods of 450 million people in China depend directly upon agriculture and the country has a growing dependence on food imports. Ozone pollution has long been known to strongly reduce crop yields. Unprecedented expansion in the industrial, residential, transport, and agricultural sectors over the last few decades has led to rapid increases in emissions of ozone precursors, posing a very real food security threat that is likely to worsen with continued economic and population growth. Bringing together the disciplines of crop physiology and economics, this project tackles the Global Challenge of food security, with a focus on China. It will quantify how ozone pollution propagates into reduced agricultural production and explore measures to mitigate its impact.