Perennial grain
A perennial grain is a grain crop that lives and remains productive for two or more years, rather than growing for only one season before harvest, like most grains and annual crops. While many fruit, nut and forage crops are long-lived perennial plants, all major grain crops presently used in large-scale agriculture are annuals or short-lived perennials grown as annuals. Scientists from several nations have argued that perennial versions of today's grain crops could be developed and that these perennial grains could make grain agriculture more sustainable.
Rationale
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." Perennial grains could reduce this threat, according to the following logic:- Most agricultural land is devoted to the production of grain crops: cereal, oilseed, and legume crops occupy 75% of US and 69% of global croplands. These grains include such cereal crops as wheat, rice, and maize; together they provide over 70% of human food calories.
- All these grain crops are currently annual plants which are generally planted into cultivated soil.
- Frequent cultivation puts soil at risk of loss and degradation.
- This "central dilemma" of agriculture in which current food production undermines the potential for future food production could be escaped by developing perennial grain crops that do not require tilling the soil each year. No-till technology enables short-lived crops to be grown with less intense tillage, but perennial plants provide the most protection for the soil.
Crop development
Annual crops have been domesticated for nearly 10,000 years, whereas no commercial perennial grains have yet been developed. It is unclear exactly why perennial grains were not domesticated alongside annual grains during the agricultural revolution. Annuals may have been more predisposed to domestication for several reasons. For one, wild annuals were likely easier targets for early domestication efforts because they generally have greater single-year yields than wild perennials. Because the fitness of annual plants depends on the reproductive output of a single year, annuals naturally invest heavily in seed production. In contrast, perennials have to balance seed production with overwinter survival in any given year and thus tend to produce lower yields per year. Second, annual plants have a shorter generation time, facilitating faster gains through the artificial selection process. Third, early agriculture used tilling to clear fields for the following year's crop and the practice of annual tilling, which clears the soil of existing plants in preparation for new ones, is not compatible with perennial grains. Finally, once annual grains were domesticated there was a reduced incentive to pursue the domestication of new perennial grains.
If the limitations of early domestication efforts explain the lack of perennial grains, there may not be an insurmountable physiological barrier to high yielding perennials. 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. However, even if physiological limitations limit resource allocation to seed production in perennials, their yields may still be comparable to or exceed annual grain yields due to improved resource acquisition and higher overall biomass.
While perennial crop domestication could alleviate some of the sustainability issues caused by reliance on annual crops, the gains may still be fundamentally limited by general agricultural practices. 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.
Methods
To capitalize on the potential benefits of perennial crop domestication, the domestication process needs to be accelerated. Serious efforts to develop new perennial grains began in the 1980s, largely driven by Wes Jackson and The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Approaches to perennial crop development generally fall under three main methods: perennialization, de novo domestication, and genetic manipulation. These methods are not mutually exclusive, can be used in tandem and each present their own challenges.Perennialization
Hybridizing existing annual crops with perennial wild relative is a common approach to perennial crop development. 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. However, perennialization is not without challenges.For one, plants produced through hybridization are often infertile so successful breeding of plants beyond the F1, or initial hybrid generation is rare. Second, perennial traits are often polygenic so conferral of a perennial lifecycle to domesticated annual crops depends on a full suite of genes being transferred to the hybrid offspring from the perennial parent. In contrast, yield traits are generally less polygenic so single genes can have positive effects on yield. Thus, perennial crop development through hybridization may be more effective if the goal of hybridization is to introduce increased yield to perennials rather than introducing perenniality to annual crops.
Accelerated domestication
Accelerated domestication of perennial wild plants provides another avenue for perennial crop development. This approach involves selection of wild herbaceous perennials based on their domestication potential, followed by artificial selection for agronomically important traits like yield, seed shattering, free-threshing seeds and plant height. Pipelines for domestication, like those developed by researchers at The Land Institute, have established criteria for evaluating the potential of candidate species to be successful for domestication programs—e.g. high variability and heritability of agronomically important traits—and also guide what traits should be focused on during breeding efforts. Extensive lists of potential candidate species can be found in Wagoner & Schaeffer and Cox et al.Domesticating new perennial species has a couple of major drawbacks. For one, wild perennial grains have very low yearly yields compared to domesticated annuals so breeding efforts have to make up a lot of ground before perennial grains are commercially viable. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many candidate species are polyploid. Polyploidy makes it harder to breed undesirable alleles out of the population and create uniform plants that grow and mature simultaneously for easy harvest.
Genetic methods
Several genetic methods can help the perennial crop development process. Genomic selection, a method of predicting plant traits based on analysis of their genome, shows promise as a method to accelerate selection of plants in domestication programs. If adult plant phenotypes can be predicted from the genomes of young plants, plants can be artificially selected at an earlier age, reducing time and resources needed to identify individuals with desirable traits. Transgenics and gene altering can add or target "domestication genes" and their orthologs in perennial plants. Domestication genes have known effects on traits that are relevant to domestication, and have been discovered in annual crop species. Genome sequencing indicates that many orthologs also exist in perennial species that may be useful targets for genetic alteration.Current applications of genetic manipulation are limited because the genomes of many candidate species have not been sequenced. Furthermore, methods of genetic manipulation have not yet been optimized in most candidate species. Despite these limitations, there have been rapid gains in the development of genetic techniques and these methods are likely to be a useful aid for the development of perennial crops in years to come.
Advantages
Several claims have been published:- Greater access to resources through a longer season.Perennial plants typically emerge earlier than annuals in the spring and go dormant in the autumn well after annual plants have died. The longer growing season allows greater interception of sunlight and rainfall. For example, In Minnesota, annual soybean seedlings emerge from the soil in early June. By this time perennial alfalfa has grown so much that it is ready for the first harvest. Therefore, by the time a soybean crop has just begun to photosynthesize, a field of alfalfa has already produced about 40% of the season's production.
- Greater access to resources through a deeper rooting zone. Most long—lived plants construct larger, deeper root systems than short-lived plants adapted to the same region. Deeper roots enable perennials to "mine" a larger volume of soil each year. A larger volume of soil also available for exploitation per unit of cropland also means a larger volume of soil water serves as a reservoir for periods without rainfall.
- More efficient use of soil nutrients. Leaching of nitrogen from fertilizer has been found to be much lower under perennial crops such as alfalfa than annual crops such as maize. A similar phenomenon is seen in unfertilized fields harvested for wild hay. While adjacent wheat fields required annual inputs of fertilizer, the wild perennial grasses continued to produce nitrogen-rich hay for 75 to 100 years with no appreciable decline in productivity or soil fertility. Presumably, the larger root systems of the perennial plants and the microbial community they support intercept and cycle nutrients passing through the system much more efficiently than do the ephemeral root systems of crop plants.
- Sustainable production on marginal lands. Cassman et al. wrote that for large areas in poor regions of the world, "annual cereal cropping …is not likely to be sustainable over the longer term because of severe erosion risk. Perennial crops and agroforestry systems are better suited to these environments." Current perennial crops and agroforestry systems do not produce grain. Grain provides greater food security than forage or fruit because it can be eaten directly by humans and it can be stored for consumption during the winter or dry season.
- Reduced Soil erosion U.S. Forest Service et al. cite perennial grasses as a preventative for soil erosion. Perennials of all kinds establish thick root systems which tie up soil and prevent surface erosion by wind and water. Since water runoff is slowed, it has a longer time to soak in and enter the groundwater system. Net water inflow into streams is marginally reduced due to groundwater infusion, but this also reduces high flow rates in streams associated with fast-flowing water-based erosion of streambeds..
- Increased wildlife populations U.S. Forest Service et al. cite slower release of water into streams, which makes water levels more consistent instead of alternating between dry and flash-flood situations common to deserts. Consistent water levels contribute to increased wildlife populations of fish, amphibians, waterfowl, and mammals dependent upon a consistent water source.
- Reduced weed competition - Minimizing tillage and herbicide applications.
- Improved soil microbiomes - Perennial grain crops may nurture beneficial soil microbiomes, as the frequent soil disturbance required in annual crop production is disruptive to these microbiomes.
- Sequester more carbon - It is hypothesized that perennial grains may sequester more carbon, due to better landscape management, and maintaining more cropland in production.