Turning to plants as an energy source is something we take for granted. Every day, we power our bodies and feed our livestock with plants. Ongoing climate change poses a threat to this energy source as some of our most-used crops are facing stressors like never before.
But a promising new candidate, sorghum, is changing the game. As we begin to see the effects of climate change, it is clear that not all crops will be reliable producers in the long term — extreme weather patterns and changing ecosystems pose a threat to many of the sources of food and energy we rely on. Sorghum, however, is up to the challenge.
As a heat-resistant and drought-tolerant plant, sorghum can adapt to a wide range of climates and is therefore likely to be a viable crop in even the most challenging of growing conditions. This is what makes its potential as a source of bioenergy so exciting. As the need for carbon-neutral energy sources increases, the stress on Earth’s plant life increases as well. Where the yield of other crops is already being affected by weather and environmental stressors, sorghum stands firm, a crop that promises to be reliable for years to come.
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center and scientists working within our Enterprise Rent-A-Car Institute for Renewable Fuels are proud to be at the forefront of game-changing research to harness the power of this extraordinary plant.
Nadia Shakoor, Ph.D., principal investigator and senior research scientist at the Danforth Center, is part of the nationwide team that is working to quantify the climate impact potential of sorghum as part of a five-year, $65 million project led by the National Sorghum producers. “Sorghum inherently boasts climate-smart attributes, and a tremendous opportunity exists to implement further climate-smart production practices and activities on working lands to achieve substantial carbon capture, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to other associated environmental benefits,” said Shakoor.
Through the support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and in partnership with a number of other top scientific research institutions, Danforth Scientist Andrea Eveland, Ph.D., is leading the Determination of Gene Function program, which seeks to understand what makes sorghum so resilient to the stress of a changing climate. And it doesn’t stop with sorghum.
“There is extraordinary genetic diversity underlying sorghum’s adaptation to stressful environments, and we want to tap into this in a precise way to inform engineering and breeding strategies for future climates,” said Eveland. “We have little understanding of what most of the 30,000-plus genes in the sorghum genome do and whether functionally conserved genes have unique control mechanisms in drought-adapted sorghum — this information could help efforts to make other crops more stress resilient, too.”
Water is a major limitation for crop production. The movement of water from soil through the stems and leaves and out into the air moves nutrients up the plant. Crop irrigation consumes 70% of global freshwater use. “To be economically viable and have environmental benefits, crops used for bioenergy production need to be grown where the supply of water is insufficient or too inconsistent to support production of traditional food crops,” said Danforth Center Principal Investigator Ivan Baxter, Ph.D., who is leading a multi-institutional research project funded by DOE to deepen the understanding of water use efficiency in sorghum.
You don’t need to be a scientist to make a difference at the Danforth Center, support our work with a donation as our scientists lay the groundwork for a future of renewable energy and reliable food sources.
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is a nonprofit research institute with a mission to improve the human condition through plant science. Its cutting-edge research, education programs and commitment to move scientific advances to the marketplace aim to position the St. Louis region as a world center for plant science.
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Sorghum: Harnessing the power of climate smart crops – St. Louis … – St Louis Business Journal
