Perennial grain

For example, cultivated systems tend to use more water, increase water pollution and soil erosion, store less carbon, emit more greenhouse gases, and support significantly less habitat and biodiversity than the ecosystems they replace The 2005 Synthesis Report of the United Nations’ Millennium Ecosystem Assessment program labeled agriculture the “largest threat to biodiversity and ecosystem function of any single human activity.”[4] Perennial grains could reduce this threat, according to the following logic: The current agricultural system is predominantly composed of herbaceous annuals.

Annual systems depend heavily on tilling and chemical applications, like pesticides and fertilizers, and thus contribute to sustainability issues like erosion, eutrophication and fossil fuel use.

[11] Second, annual plants have a shorter generation time, facilitating faster gains through the artificial selection process.

For instance, the trade off between survival and yield in perennials should primarily be observed in the plant's first year when they are establishing root structures.

In subsequent years, perennials may actually benefit from having a longer growing season and greater access to soil resources due to pre-established root systems ( which can also reduce reliance on fertilizer).

Producing grain on scales large enough to meet the world demand depends on the conversion of massive tracts of native grassland to agriculture, regardless of the perennial or annual nature of the crop.

Serious efforts to develop new perennial grains began in the 1980s, largely driven by Wes Jackson and The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.

This approach aims to conserve the important agronomic traits that have been developed in annual grain crops while converting the plant to a perennial life cycle with well-developed long-lived root systems.

Polyploidy makes it harder to breed undesirable alleles out of the population and create uniform plants that grow and mature simultaneously for easy harvest.

Since 2001, the nonprofit organization The Land Institute's Dr. Lee DeHaan has led development of the crop, coining the trademarked name Kernza in 2009.

This international team has developed growing techniques and dramatically improved traits such as shatter resistance, seed size and yield, enabling the crop to now be produced and marketed at a small scale.

[29] As the first perennial grain crop grown across the northern United States, researchers hope that Kernza will help dramatically shift agriculture practice, making croplands multifunctional through the production of both food and ecosystem services.