East Lansing, Michigan
July 17, 2009
Every time a farmer plants a cash
crop, he or she makes a substantial investment of money, time
and labor resources. But what if that crop wasn’t something that
had to be planted every year, but instead, sprouted out of the
ground each spring and was ready for a summer harvest?
Michigan State University (MSU)
associate professor of crop and soil sciences at the Kellogg
Biological Station, Sieg Snapp, is addressing that question. Her
team is studying the possibilities for developing perennial
wheat as a crop for environmentally friendly agricultural
production. She’s conducting this work thanks to a four-year,
one million dollar U.S. Department of Agriculture organic
research grant.
Snapp is leading a team that includes MSU professor of
agriculture, food and resource economics, Scott Swinton; MSU
outreach specialist, Vicki Morrone; MSU wheat breeder, Janet
Lewis; Michigan farmers; and colleagues at Washington State
University. Their work builds on research that leads to a new
type of perennial grain crop. “Our goal is to go the next step
and develop perennial wheat varieties and management that are
practical for farmers to adopt, to use as a ground cover, a
forage AND a grain crop.
“Washington and Kansas have conducted innovative plant breeding,
crossing intermediate wheat grass forage to annual wheat to get
the annual wheat grain characteristics and a close to marketable
product,” Snapp says. “I realized that nobody was focusing on
agronomic management, and practical aspects of variety
development, so my student, Brook Wilke, started about three
years ago to evaluate varieties suitable for Michigan.” Snapp
and the team will study these perennial wheat varieties at the
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station (KBS), an MSU Agricultural
Experiment Station facility located in southwestern Michigan.
“We’re going to be investigating them for their adaptation to
Michigan farms at the research station and on farms,” Snapp
says. “We’re looking at organic production practices, and
different management options, like whether we could possibly
graze the crop in the fall to obtain multiple products, forage
and grain.”
The research team will study the wheat over three to four
cropping seasons so they can observe its hardiness under
different weather conditions and extremes in temperature and
precipitation. The perennial wheat isn’t just a money-saving
crop --it also protects the environment -- helping to keep the
soil in place and capture rain and snow.
“It’s always growing and keeps roots in the soil to prevent
erosion,” Snapp points out. “We’ve already found that the roots
of the perennial wheat can reach three-times deeper than annual
wheat roots and this is promising for a crop that could capture
carbon.”
The perennial wheat may save farmers money at planting, produce
enough yield to allow them to realize a profit, provide a
secondary income source and protect the environment, but it also
has to fit in on the typical Michigan farm. Snapp won’t be
conducting her studies in a vacuum, but will include farmer
cooperators who will be part of the research team, giving input
into the experiments and sharing the results they find in using
it on their farms.
In a year or two, the researchers will produce enough seed at
KBS to provide farmer experimentation opportunities. Snapp plans
to include growers who can help test the wheat under different
conditions on farms of varying sizes around the state.
“We’ll also look at some of the economics and how it does as a
single and dual crop,” she says. “That’s where the agricultural
economist will come in and look at profitability of the dual use
crop.”
Snapp says she’s looking forward to seeing how farmers will fit
perennial wheat into their crop systems. “My experience with
participatory farm research is that you learn new ways from the
farmers to make it work,” she says.
The studies will continue at KBS while the on-farm research gets
underway in a systematic effort that Snapp has developed that is
used by plant breeders in Africa and Asia, a research design
called “mother and baby trials.”
“The research station trial is the ‘mother’ and that’s the
big-scale trial that includes all of the varieties and agronomic
treatments,” she says. “The on-farm trials are the ‘baby’
trials. We’ll give farmers the opportunity to choose a few
varieties to test on their farm, which will facilitate testing
across many environments and under different management systems
including organic production. Farmers will have the opportunity
to provide feedback on varieties they test.”
So what will become of this information? It will be used to
inform basic science research conducted at universities around
the world, but Snapp will also disseminate the study’s outcomes
via MSU Extension to farmers who might want to grow perennial
wheat in fields across Michigan and beyond.
“MSU Extension is part of our advisory group and we work with
several specialists,” Snapp says. “Their role will become even
more important as we get more seed and do this on a larger scale
-- we couldn’t do it without Extension.” |
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