Prairie Pioneer Seeks To Reinvent The Way We Farm (Breeding Perennial Crops)

[NickB79]

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113766846&sc=fb&cc=fp

"The problem, Jackson explains, is that agriculture in most places is based on practices that use up limited resources. The major grains, like wheat and corn, are planted afresh each year. When the fields are later plowed, they lose soil. The soil that remains in these fields loses nitrogen and carbon.

snip

Jackson decided to figure out a way to breed grain crops so they can be planted once, actually replenish the soil, and be harvested year after year. One of the scientists Jackson brought to the Land Institute to work on this is a Minnesota farm boy turned plant breeder, Lee DeHaan.

snip

DeHaan has taken a native wheat relative that's already a perennial, and hybridized it to produce grains that are more like the wheat we actually grind into flour. They call this new kind of wheat Kernza.

Other scientists at the Land Institute are working on perennial sunflowers and perennial sorghum. Sorghum is another important staple crop around the world, though it's grown mostly for cattle food here in the United State"


Interesting stuff. In college, back around 2003, I wrote up a theoretical research proposal for my professor about the possibility of using perennial corn ancestors in Mexico to crossbreed a strain of perennial field corn. I never knew about this person's work, but it's good to see that this work is actively being pursued.

[enough]

1. http://www.landinstitute.org/ (nt)

[PDJane]

2. this is a much wiser use of the land;

and would require fewer, if any, fertilizers on an ongoing basis. I'm very glad to see someone working on this, since this would go a long way to helping repair the damage that annual crops do to the soil and to the air.

[izquierdista]

3. It's about time

This isn't a new idea. Sustainable agriculture from tree crops has been practiced since ancient times. Olive oil instead of sunflower, corn, or soybean oil; grape vines for fresh fruit, raisins, and wine; kudzu and alfalfa instead of soybean meal for animal feed. Field crops entail an enormous amount of busy work and energy inputs compared to maintaining a permanent crop in good yielding condition.

[formercia]

5. Big Oil, Big Machinery, Big Pesticides, you name it.

Big Bucks.

[Speck Tater]

4. In the right climate, the lowly tomato can become a perennial tree. Tomato tree picture enclosed

From Wikipedia: The massive "tomato tree" growing inside the Walt Disney World Resort's experimental greenhouses in Lake Buena Vista, Florida may be the largest single tomato plant in the world. The plant has been recognized as a Guinness World Record Holder, with a harvest of more than 32,000 tomatoes and a total weight of 1,151.84 pounds (522 kg). It yields thousands of tomatoes at one time from a single vine.

[kestrel91316]

6. I knew this article would be about Wes Jackson even before I clicked on it.

He's doing a great thing with his perennial grain crop research.

[Tumbulu]

7. I knew it too

Once I met him at an IFOAM conference with Vandana Shiva in the mid 90's. We had a long discussion about genetic engineering.