Environmental studies have shown that 40% of the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) passes through plant stomata every year. Thus, controlling stomatal development and function is considered as a key for increasing crop plant productivity and water-use efficiency. Stomata are pores found in plant leaves that are responsible for gas exchange with the surrounding environment. As it has been reported that light and atmospheric CO2 levels influence the number of stomata, synthetic chemists and plant biologists at the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) in Nagoya University, have decided to explore this topic using a chemical approach and succeeded in developing small molecules to increase the number of stomata in plant leaves. The result of this study was reported in the journal, Chemical Communications.