 We currently farm 12% of all of the surface area, land surface area, on planet Earth. And if you zoom out a little bit and you look at all of this farmland across the entire globe, almost half of it is occupied by three crops. And these three crops are a few traits in common, they're grasses, they're grains and they're very productive in terms of producing seed for humans to eat. Corn, wheat, and rice. That's the three crops that make up almost half of all of our crop land. And I mentioned we're really good at producing yield from these three crops. That's what our ancestors had been focusing on for tens of thousands of years, breeding these crops to have big seeds, to have high nutritional value. But what we've realized is that when we've replaced the landscape with these very productive crops, we've altered the landscape and the ecosystem services that land can provide. So right now the farmland that makes up 12% of all of our surface area produces lots of crop production but does not provide any of these other ecosystem services that society so nearly depends on. Things like resources for pollinators, regulation of water quantity, quality, managing the carbon balance and the soil on the atmosphere. And these ecosystem services are, lack thereof, are threatening human health as well as costing communities a lot of money. So here's an example. This is a map that shows the concentration of nitrate in the drinking water in Minnesota. All of the small dots are private wells and these larger dots are municipal wells. So those that are in the red have levels of nitrate that exceed the EPA's safe drinking limit of 10 parts per million or 10 milligrams per liter. So you can see there's a couple hot spots in Minnesota, Southwest Minnesota, there's a really shallow aquifer there, a lot of annual row crop production, lots of contaminated drinking water. The central sand plains of Minnesota, so core structured soil, lots of nitrate can leach through the system and contaminate our drinking water there. And then down in Southeast Minnesota the problem is increasing. There's not as many of those high level wells yet but there's a lot in the medium range. We have a karst geology down there which is really prone to this leaching. So this is a problem that has human health implications directly. It's bad for us to drink water with nitrate in it but it's also costing these communities a lot of money. So on a per household basis you can see that to the thousands of dollars. And then big scales zooming out, we're all probably well aware of the dead zone of Mexico which is related to nutrient losses, nitrogen and phosphorus in our waterways. This is a problem for the environment and for humans. So what we need to do, and you've heard this both from Don, the Forever Green Initiative is all about developing new crops that provide both marketable, profitable yields and the ecosystem services that society depends on. So the first one that is really emerged out of the Forever Green Initiative in partnership with the Land Institute is Kernza. So the plant itself is called Intermediate Weak Grass. Intermediate Weak Grass is a perennial forage grass that was brought to the United States in the early 20th century. And the Land Institute started domesticating that, turning it from a forage grass into a grain crop in the early 2000s. And the Land Institute then officially partnered with University of Minnesota around 2010 or so. And we've been working together to continue the improvement of the crop through breeding genetics. But also we've expanded the research program to study those environmental benefits as well as the agronomics. How do you grow this profitably? So I'm going to refer to both the plant and the grain as Kernza because it's a lot easier to save than Intermediate Weak Grass will run over again in our presentation. So I'll refer to it as Kernza. Why did we select Kernza as the future perennial grain crop? One reason is because it has relatively large seeds already for perennial grass. As this deep dense root system and the bolson photos of provides the perenniality and it provides environmental benefits, storage carbon, filters water. It's also tolerant to a wide range of growing conditions. So we have collaborators growing Kernza in Utah to New York State, Sweden, Australia, South America. So a wide range of growing conditions. Before I talk more about the experiments that you've grown with me, I want to give you just a quick timeline of what the life cycle of a Kernza cropping system looks like. We typically plant in late summer, early fall. We try to save before September 1st. The plant will then grow vegetatively, just produces leaves throughout the fall till the snow flies. And then as soon as the ground is thawed, the plant continues to grow just vegetatively again for six to eight weeks. And then in mid-May, it essentially bolts, stem elongates, produces a seed head, flowers, goes through physiological maturity and the grain is ready to harvest above mid-August. After the grain is harvested, the plant continues to grow just vegetatively again in the fall till the snow flies, so probably November or so. And then the cycle begins in the spring with regrowth, just vegetative regrowth. So at the University of Minnesota, as I mentioned, we have a breeding and genetics program. But we also have a team working on the agronomics, and that's most of what I do, as well as a team that's measuring the environmental impacts. We have a special initiative focused on implementation, so getting Kernza out onto the landscape, working with growers. We have an extensive outreach program to make sure that this is a low risk, high profitability system. There's a team working on the food science aspects, how do you use this as an ingredient in new food products? We also have a team focused on commercialization. So we're developing the markets, we are developing the supply chains. You just can't take Kernza to the grain elevator right now. There are special markets and supply chains that go through, and that's in development. So I'll just touch on some of the highlights of these different research activities. So just real quickly with the Kernza breeding, ultimate goal, increase seed size and grain yield. And the breeders have done a pretty good job of this. So this just shows the seed size, and this is essentially time, the breeding cycle, from the early 2000s at the Land Institute. And this is a pretty rapid pace. So the pace is 5 to 10 percent increase in seed size per year. To give you an idea of how fast that is, wheat has increased on average 1.8 percent per cycle since the early 1900s. So 1.8 percent increase in seed size. We're averaging 5 to 10 percent, so 5 to 10 times faster. Now that's because it's a brand new crop. This is expected, they call it the honeymoon phase of breeding with the new crop. It's going to be very fast in the first few decades, and we'll slow down, but right now we're making rapid advancements. One of the reasons we're able to make such rapid advancements is because we sequence the genome. We know roughly, I have a general idea of which genes can control certain traits. So this means that we can move through the breeding program much more quickly. It does not mean that we are using any genetic modification in our breeding program. It's all still traditional plant breeding, mostly because genetic modification wouldn't make it any quicker, and we don't need to do it. So we have the genome sequence that's helping us rapidly get through increasing seed size and domestication traits. Now a quick overview of the agronomics research program, studying everything from establishment to harvest and storage. Yield longevity is a major agronomic priority. Even looking at studies related to climate adaptation, how is this crop going to perform in 25, 50 years from now under changing climates? So our major objective is to increase yield and profitability. And we're looking at a number of different ways to do that. One is a big part of our program is really focused on fertility. So lots of work on nitrogen and phosphorus fertility, and one sustainable way of providing the nitrogen for the curns could be by intercropping legumes into the system, which is what Beth mentioned. So we're just initiated a new multi-state trial partnership with Wisconsin, Madison, and Land Institute, where we're trialing a number of different legume species, intercropping it with curns of different species that are suited for different types of growing conditions. And we're going to find out which one performs best across these different states. We've done a lot of work with row spacing. Some of these are really fundamental agronomic work. How do you harvest it? Do you swap it? Do you direct combine? What's the pros and cons to all of these different techniques? I thought some work with companion cropping, too, or establishment. If anybody has any questions about this, we can talk after the presentation, have lots of details on it. And some preliminary recommendations for some of these practices. I would say the second top agronomic priority is to figure out ways to sustain yields through time. Right now grain yields drop pretty dramatically after year two, probably about year three, sometimes in year four. Yields drop from 800 to 1000 pounds per acre down to 200 pounds per acre to a point where it's not going to be profitable for much longer. So how do you make that stand continue to produce seed through time? That's one of our major focuses. We're looking at disturbing the stand. As it ages, it actually gets more and more dense. There's more and more plants in the field. And when it gets more dense, each plant produces less seed, and that's the problem we're facing. So we're looking at ways to kill some of those plants in between rows, interval cultivation. We're also doing the basic science to figure out why is the plant responding this way as it gets crowded? Why is it producing less seed? We're doing different trials to see if we can graze it to prevent that yield decline, clip it with mowing, using fire even. But the grazing aspect leads me to another part of the research program, which is just really about increasing profitability. Another way to increase profitability is dual use, getting a second source of revenue from that single stand. One way is to graze it. As I mentioned, the plant produces vegetative leaves early in the spring and in the fall. Those can either be directly grazed or harvested for forage. Other ways to increase profitability is through reducing inputs, and one means could be by intercropping legumes, offset nitrogen fertilizer inputs. So grazing forage harvest. And this is a map of all the different trials occurring across the state of Minnesota. It just shows you that we're testing it in a lot of different soil types, a lot of different growing environments. We have a lot of water quality trials, greenhouse gas emissions, and agronomic trials. And this kind of leads me into some of the environmental impacts research. So I showed the VET diagram the different circles overlapping because they actually do overlap. So some experiments will sound like an agronomic experiment, but we're also going to be measuring water quality and soil carbon sequestration in that agronomic trial. And these are the environmental impacts or ecosystem services that we're really focusing on. Again, I mentioned the nitrate leaching. That's a really hot topic in Minnesota specifically. We have a lot of experiments across the state looking at the reduction in nitrate leaching from Kernza. And here's some of our data. So on the y-axis is the concentration of nitrate in the soil water beneath the roots of Kernza, of Kernza, switchgrass, and corn. And this is over four or five different locations in a couple of different years. Here's that 10 parts per million or milligrams per liter safe drinking limit. On average, Kernza has very, very little nitrate in that soil water as opposed to corn. And this is common levels of 40 to 60 that's frequently observed across the state. One of the reasons is because of that deep dense root system is really, really efficient at capturing the nitrogen and utilizing it. So here's a figure looking at the amount of carbon storage potential of Kernza and managed with different nitrogen fertilizer sources compared to a corn soybean rotation and a wheat soybean rotation. Negative values need carbon storage. So you can see that there's a lot of potential here for carbon sequestration with the Kernza, which might not be surprising because of that deep dense root system. There's a lot of carbon in those roots. Now I'll just quickly touch on some of our activities around implementation. We have a bunch of research going on that's modeling how Kernza's going to perform across the state of Minnesota. So we can identify where's the best place to grow Kernza in a short term. We're developing tools, grower tools. We have a grower guidebook. We have lots of extension and outreach activities going on in this arena as well. And part of this is supported by state funding, legislative funding, LCCMR. And this is a really unique project. This is a list of the different stakeholder groups that's participating in this specific project around nitrate and leaching. So you can see that we're working with the State Department of Aged and Health, a city, a city of Chadfield, a rural water provider, Lincoln Pipestone Rural Water. They pump water from the groundwater and sell it to communities in the seven colony region, Southwest Minnesota, Agriculture Utilization Research Institute, Minnesota Rural Water Association, Greenlands the Waters, and non-profitably focused on outreach and extension. So together we're doing this research. We are planting large production scale fields of Kernza for demonstration and we're using those sites to host these field days and outreach activities. So it's a really cool integrated project. We're getting good data and also able to provide some education to the community. And here's a map of, I think these are active Kernza fields in Minnesota, roughly the acreage in different regions. So there's more than 500 acres of Kernza being grown in Minnesota right now, which is about a quarter of the world's Kernza production, about 2,000 acres worldwide. These are some of the farmers growing that in Minnesota. So I just want to quickly end by acknowledging the team members. There's a big team of folks working on Kernza. I'm just representing the Forever Breeding Kernza group, Craig Shaffer, Don Wise, Jess Gutnick. These are the new commercialization hires, Colin Curitin and Connie Carlson. And Jim Anderson leads the breeding program and Praveen is the postdoc in that breeding program, who really does most of the breeding work himself. I just want to acknowledge the farmers we work with, all the institutions and the stakeholder groups, and of course the funding agencies. None of this can be possible without the funding. So thank you so much to NCSAIR, USDA, NIFA. We have a federal grant from the USDA, Minnesota Legislative Trust Fund, and many others. So with the Kernza this morning, planted in probably three years, you have to replant it. Why does the seed production go down like that with a lot of perennial grasses? Yeah, like I mentioned, the stand gets thicker. There's more biomass there year after year, but that just produces last seed. So the reason why, well we don't know, we don't exactly know why. Why does the plant stop producing seeds when it gets in a dense environment? One reason is because, and this is just hypothetical here, but if a plant recognizes that it's really crowded, it costs a lot of energy for a plant to produce seeds. And if it has an indication that those seeds, it's already crowded, why would it produce seeds in a very competitive environment as one hypothesis? We have a lot of greenhouse experiments going on right now to figure out, looking at below ground signaling, to see what's going on with different organs and chemicals in the soil to see if the plant's water's running too. The companion planting, would that help with that? You have more space in between the firms or clients? Well, there's a couple of points to that. Yep, that could help. And in others, intercropping could help. Just from there being a different species next to the curza could prevent that plant from shutting down seed production, if it's a different species. Especially if it's a leg you're providing, thank you. It's some species that really dislikes and wants to crowd out by producing more seed. Yep. Can you speak to how curza might be different than say, like when you come across grass mixed with alfalfa in a field, and in some of those plantings, that grass would be intermediate wheat grass, and how that differs? How well, yeah. The curza is a specific variety. We have a variety of curns now. It's called Minnesota Clear Water. Physiologically, it's going to be different because it has bigger seeds and more seeds. It's going to be shorter. We've reduced the plant height so that it doesn't lodge. So that's how it's going to look different from intermediate wheat grass in the forage mix. But biomass yields, like total forage yields, are actually still pretty similar as the intermediate wheat grass forage types. And the forage quality is still pretty similar. Also, do you depend against the alfalfa or the lumbar? We've done a lot of alfalfa curns in our cropping trials, and the outcome really depends on the soil type and the location. In some instances, the curnzo will dominate the alfalfa after two or three years and take over. In other instances, the alfalfa will actually be more competitive and the curnzo will die back a little bit. But keep in mind that these are planted in rows, and it's not like a forage mix where it would just be all mixed together in a sward. So it's a little bit different environment in terms of competition. Kind of an insider here, but I got to ask a thought-provoking question that I guess I'm stuck back a little bit, but can you talk just a little bit about the success you've had in selecting for the shattering and for that very old maturity? Yeah, the shattering. So shattering is an issue with any wild, trying to domesticate a wild plant and wants to get rid of its seed. We want to hold onto its seed so that we can all harvest it in one shot. They've made a lot of advancements with reducing shattering. And this is important because so far we've had to swath everything to knock it down at our pretty early maturity, which was grain development and moisture content, to prevent the shattering. So we'd have to swath it, but then we've had a lot of issues combining the grain onto the wind rows and some mold and fungus problems of grain quality. So by reducing shattering, that allows us to go out and direct combine. It gives us more time to get out and let that the seeds dried out on the standing grass without falling off the stems and then we can direct combine. So just last year I'd say we, a majority of our fields, we direct combine for the first time and it's working out pretty well. So that's an important trait that we're working on. What's the other question? Oh that, well it kind of banished it, but it's just, I'm just going back to Carmen's sake and talking to him that, and I made the answer that I already talked about the shattering, but was it part of the swathing because of the variable maturity on the stalk? Yeah, yeah. So those, the seeds mature from the base upwards. So if you wait for all the seeds on the top to get to a safe moisture content, you're going to have some of those in the bottom shattering. Alternatively, you could harvest earlier and get those in the bottom and then you're going to have wet seeds in the compound like those on the top are less mature. What we've learned is that the seeds on the base are larger and they're worth getting and not letting shatter. So that's one reason to swathe is that you can knock it down and ensure that you're going to get those large seeds. But that's where our recommendation would be is to get out there earlier, especially if you have the ability to dry, if you have a grain bin where you can dry, if it turns up, definitely go out a little bit earlier and make sure you get those seeds that are at the base because they're the largest. Did you see it hit the hull on? Yeah, it's not too bad. It requires a process, the de-hardened process. That's another trait that the breeders are working on, is free threshing. So hopefully in the next couple varieties, we'll have one that the grain will be naked out of the hull in the combine. So the combine will leave the threshing. But right now about, I'd say about 20% of the seed still has a hull on, and then that needs to go through de-hulling process. HFI was here as an exhibitor. They have a line specifically developed to de-hull Kernza. Yep. How direct tolerant is Kernza? It's very drought tolerant. It's a lot of the initial breeding work was done in Kansas, a lot less precipitation than us here in the upper Midwest. When it's more susceptible to too much water. So it doesn't like to be wet. So like clay, sand? It grows pretty well in the sandy soils. And we're just going to be starting a new trial. It's planted at this past fall. We're going to be irrigating Kernza in the central sand plains. We're going to have a trial where there's irrigation, there's another irrigation to see just how well it can perform without the irrigation really, because everything in that region is pretty much irrigated. So this could be a low input crop for those specific really sandy soils. I've done a lot of experiments in pretty heavy soils, and it does okay if it's not too wet.