Plant scientists are in a race against the clock to find more sustainable farming options. The answer may lie with perennial corn, says Kyle Swentowsky, a postdoctoral researcher at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state.
Perennials grow, flower, die back and are reborn in regular cycles. They offer multiple advantages compared to annual or seasonal crops such as longer growing seasons, greater yields, better efficiency for storing and recycling nutrients, and deeper roots, Swentowsky said in a news release.
“You can imagine if you’ve been growing the same annual crop for 20, 50 or more years in the same spot, a lot of the surface-level nutrients and water are mostly tapped out,” he said.
“But if you have a crop capable of growing deeper, you may have access to a huge amount of resources and water that you didn’t have before.”
Most staple crops have relatives that are perennial. But there’s a catch. They haven’t been domesticated. Their fruits or grains often are smaller and less tasty, and it’s more difficult to work with them.
Swentowsky and other plant scientists are trying to breed desired perennial traits into current crops. But the genetics that enable perennial crops to survive winters and regrow by themselves remain complex. Perennial traits include frost tolerance as well as a plant structure primed for regrowth and the ability to store nutrients in a “reserve pod.”
Swentowsky started looking for regions of the corn genome that control those traits while a doctoral student at the University of Georgia. At the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory he’s studying exactly how the genes and desirable traits work.
Recent progress has been made with crops such as rice and wheat. There’s now a perennial strain of rice grown on farms in Asia. There’s also a new perennial wheatgrass called Kernza.
In the past decade scientists have been able to take a wild species of perennial wheat and domesticate it to possess desirable crop traits. Perennial wheat is currently being used to make cereals, beer and other products.
“People have done a lot of research on it, and it’s been shown to have some of the sustainable benefits that people have hypothesized about for a long time,” Swentowsky said.
He hopes his research on perennial corn will help create better crops to feed and protect the planet, he said.
“The reality is that we need to develop more crop varieties and get more creative with agriculture so we can adapt to a changing climate,” he said.
