Robert Rabson Award

2022 Winner: Berkley Walker

Berkley Walker is recognized for his foundational work addressing carbon fixation, with a special focus on metabolic fluxes that are important for modelling and ultimately improving the photosynthetic performance of crops under natural environments. At the metabolic scale, Berkley has made key contributions to understanding how carbon assimilation and other aspects of metabolism interact to achieve high rates of carbon fixation and productivity under changing climates and environments. He showed that 30-40% of crop energy use goes to managing photorespiratory fluxes under current climate conditions, and even under future climates, photorespiration will be a major source of energy and carbon loss. His body of work provides important insights for the optimization of crop yields during climate change.