Breeding for life. How perennial crops keep the soil in place, increase fertility and sequester carbon in the soil - Sten Stymne

Breeding for Life

Domestication of perennial cropsthrough modern plant breeding

Sten StymneDepartment of Plant Breeding

Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences

Tilled fields in the winter leak nutrients and reduce carbon in the soils

Winter crops reduce leakage, increase carbon in the soil, improve water and nutrient use efficiency and increase yield.

Biannual tap root crops like sugar beet cannot be planted as winter crops

Winter Summer

Biannual tap root crops like sugar beet cannot be planted as winter crops

Winter

SummerGenetic engineer can produce hybrid sugar beat that does not flower upon vernalisation allowing the fields to be covered by sugar beet plants during winter and improve beet yield with 25%.

Biannual tap root crops like sugar beet cannot be planted as winter crops

Winter

SummerGenetic engineering can produce hybrid sugar beet that does not flower upon vernalisation allowing the fields to be covered by sugar beet plants during winter and improve beet yield with >25%.

Biannual tap root crops like sugar beet cannot be planted as winter crops

Winter

SummerGenetic engineer can produce hybrid sugar beat that does not flower upon vernalisation allowing the fields to be covered by sugar beet plants during winter and improve beet yield with 25%.

Scientific American December 2011

Black death pandemic

The invasion of perennial plants in abandoned agricultural land after the Black Death might have caused a decrease in CO2 levels that lead to the ’Little Ice Age’

Winter wheat och perenníal wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium )

Winter wheat och perenníal wheatgrass (Thinopyrum intermedium )

If all agricultural land was planted with perennial crops it is calculated that athmospheric CO2 levels will decrease to pre-industrial levels!

Nearly only annual plants have been domesticated for agriculture during the 10 000 years ofplant domestication.

.

Of several reasons it was much easier to domesticate annual herbs than perennial.

Also, no perennial herbs have the same massive seed setting as the annuals.

Modern plant breeding can uncouple the negative correlation between perenniality and seed yield

The rapid advancement of plant science and modern plant breeding methods offer opportunity to develop perennial agricultural crops in a reasonable time frame.

Two approaches:

1. Introduce perenniality in annual crops by introduction of genes from wild relatives.

2. Domesticate a wild perennial plant to an agriculture crop.

Only the Swedish domestication program pursue this. However it might have an advantage since these plants have been evolved as perennials over million of years.

(Lepidium campestre)• Good agronomic stature• Very cold hardy (overwinter even in most nortern part of Sweden)

• High seed yield (5 ton/ha)• Biannual

Domestication of Lepidium campestre toan oil crop

Late Prof. Arnulf Merker

Cover crop seeded with cereal and

harvested the second year

We are now domesticating Lepidium to a biannual and perennial oil crop using modern plant breeding methods.

Gene technology: Genetic simple traits that we know how to introduce by genetic engineering.

Cross breeding: Complex traits and traits encoded by unidentified genes

Domestication with genetic engineering:

Professor Li-Hua Zhu Ph.D. student Emelie Ivarson

Development of an efficient transformation protocol

Seed shattering is a major problem in Lepidium

9 Hertz for 5, 10, 20, 40…seconds

Seed shattering test

Wild type

GM line 15

GM line 18

3 min

85 min

21 min

The Lepidium seed oil has a quality that is not good for anything

Oleic acid

Linolen

ic ac

idEr

ucic a

cid

Oleic acid

Linolen

ic ac

id

Wild type oil GM oil

The GM seed oil is an excellent frying oil

Fatty acid composition of wild type Lepidium Fatty acid composition of GM Lepidium

Series10

102030405060708090

%

Oil content low (20%) in Lepidium seedsand little genetic variation.

Increased to 23% (17% increase) with gene technology.Target: 30% (will then give the same yield as winter rape per ha)

We use the latest genomic tools in cross breeding of Lepidium:

• Better establishment of seedlings

• Perenniality

Major traits to be introduced:Dr. Mulatu Geleta

Introduction of Perenniality

2 0 2 3 - 0 4 - 1 4

261st round growth

2nd round growth

F1 generation

L. campestre-heterophyllum hybrid

2 0 2 3 - 0 4 - 1 4 27

Lepidium-campestre-heterophyllum F2 population

28

F1-G1

F1-G2

F2-G1

F2-G2

F2-G2

F3-G2

L. campestre-heterophyllum hybrids

F3-G1

170 Billion US dollars

Manhattan project 26 billion dollars Apollo project

Perennial crop projects globally0,00001 billion dollars

Save Our SoilSave Our Planet

In Sweden organic farming recieve 600M SEK/year in extra subsidies, a cultivationsystem that decrease carbon in the soil.

Research in developing perennial crops recieve 3M SEK /year