Kernza researcher Prabin Bajgain, PhD, in a field of intermediate wheatgrass. Photo by K.S. Bajgain.

Seeds of change
University of Minnesota plant and environmental scientists lead the world with their innovative approach to developing new perennial crops like Kernza

University of Minnesota researchers have gone all in on perennial grain Kernza, the kind of deep-rooted plant that many believe will prove essential for both feeding humanity and meeting the challenges of our changing climate.

Unlike annual crops, which currently occupy most of Minnesota’s farmland and provide cover for soil less than four months of the year, Kernza, a perennial grain related to wheat, sinks its roots 10 feet or more into the soil—more than twice as deep as annual wheat. By covering soils and rooting deeply, Kernza improves water quality, builds soil health, and pulls carbon from the atmosphere.

Protecting precious soil, water, and biodiversity resources is an all-consuming mission for the scientists who work with the University’s Forever Green Initiative, a research and crop commercialization platform in the U’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resource Sciences (CFANS).

“Soil is the building block of all food, all life,” explains Nick Jordan, a professor of agroecology in the Agronomy and Plant Genetics Department and co-director of the Forever Green Initiative. “And though we have some of the planet’s best soil here in the Upper Midwest, our great challenge today is to make our food and agricultural systems as good at taking care of that soil as they are at feeding the world.”

Climate-smart agriculture

While Kernza’s intensive research and development (R&D) began in 2003 at The Land Institute in Kansas, Kernza research got a major boost after Don Wyse, the late co-founder of Forever Green, brought it to the U in 2010. Ten years later, the Forever Green team released the first nationally available commercial Kernza variety, MN-Clearwater. 

Still, the crop remains a work in progress, Jordan says, as scientists work to increase Kernza yields and make it an economically viable perennial grain for widespread use in beer, bread, and many more products (see sidebar).

Along the way, the Forever Green team has also been developing the formula for getting new, eco-friendly perennial crops into production, something that has largely eluded researchers who have been breeding alternative plants for almost a century.

“Plant development can’t happen in a vacuum,” says Jordan. “Even with the best new plant alternatives available, it’s very complicated and expensive for farmers to start growing a new crop—and no company is going to gear up to make new food products if they aren’t sure there’ll be steady supply of the grain.”

So Forever Green has taken a three-legged-stool approach to the development of all their crops—and they’re working on a whole new suite of plants, including low-carbon animal feeds and transportation fuels in addition to perennial food grains like Kernza. That approach includes proactively developing commercial markets and building supportive public policy (a massive effort) concurrent with the long arc of plant R&D. 

Growing partnerships

Forever Green works with a network of partners, ranging from nonprofits and other researchers to companies like General Mills, to drive these societal shifts and ensure that it’s not just climate-smart agricultural research—it’s economically smart, too. 

“Forever Green is unique in that approach,” Jordan says. “All of our effort to develop new plants will go nowhere unless it’s financially feasible for farmers to grow them and for companies to process them into food.” 

Feeding the world’s 8 billion-plus people remains a daunting challenge. Scientists agree, says Jordan, that the 10 main crops we currently rely on are not enough—we need new, climate-friendly crops like Kernza, and we need them fast. In that context, Forever Green’s work on building an economic and public policy infrastructure that grows hand-in-hand with plant science may prove key to the challenge. 

Kernza grain up close. Photo by Carmen Fernholz.

The Forever Green team, which has benefitted from generous funding from philanthropic organizations like the McKnight Foundation, General Mills, the Walton Family Foundation, and Builders Initiative is now trying to raise “a few hundred million dollars” to fund the people, research infrastructure, and equipment necessary to help build a perennial agricultural system that nurtures the natural world as it provides the food we need.

“Nothing we’re talking about at Forever Green is hypothetical,” Jordan emphasizes. “Kernza is growing in Minnesota fields today. Animals are grazing Kernza crops. You can buy Kernza products. So what we’d like to do next is take what we’ve learned—which is a lot—and increase our efforts massively.”

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