Perennials as Future Grain Crops: Opportunities and Challenges

Abstract

Perennial grain crops could make a valuable addition to sustainable agriculture, potentially even as an alternative to their annual counterparts. The ability of perennials to grow year after year significantly reduces the number of agricultural inputs required, in terms of both planting and weed control, while reduced tillage improves soil health and on-farm biodiversity. Presently, perennial grain crops are not grown at large scale, mainly due to their early stages of domestication and current low yields. Narrowing the yield gap between perennial and annual grain crops will depend on characterizing differences in their life cycles, resource allocation, and reproductive strategies and understanding the trade-offs between annualism, perennialism, and yield. The genetic and biochemical pathways controlling plant growth, physiology, and senescence should be analyzed in perennial crop plants. This information could then be used to facilitate tailored genetic improvement of selected perennial grain crops to improve agronomic traits and enhance yield, while maintaining the benefits associated with perennialism.

Genomic insights into the NPGS intermediate wheatgrass germplasm collection

“…While some species have seen significant changes in phenotype by modifying as few as five genes (Li et al., 2018; Zsögön et al., 2018), progress in IWG may be sustained if tens or hundreds of QTL control each trait (Crain et al., 2022b). As IWG is an outcrossing hexaploid, differing transcriptional activity at the subgenome (homoeologous groups) level could hinder genome editing effort until the transcriptional landscape is resolved (Chapman et al., 2022).…”

Climate Change—The Rise of Climate-Resilient Crops

“…The process of changing the cultivation system begins by crossing annual crops with their perennial wild relatives. Currently, the agronomic traits of such plants and their productivity are not yet satisfactory [ 63 , 64 ], but they have potential to become a part of diversified agriculture.…”

Plants reduced nitrous oxide emissions from a Northern Great Plains saline/sodic soil

“…had good emergence and shoot biomass, compared with other Brassica species, in a related saline/sodic soil study (Nleya et al., in review). The third species selected was perennial Kernza intermediate wheatgrass ( Thinopyrum intermedium ) (hereafter Kernza) that is being tested as a perennial grain crop in upper Midwest US environments (Bajgain et al., 2019; Chapman et al., 2022).…”