A January 1998 article in New Scientist
detailed the work several groups of researchers are doing to try to create
viable perennial food crops.
Current food crops are almost all
annuals – they grow for a single season and then die, necessitating replanting
every year. Development of a perennial crop would have several advantages,
with the main one being a minimization of soil erosion. Beyond that, however,
since perennials tend to absorb more nutrients than annuals they would
likely require less fertilizer. They also tend to be more resistant to
pests and disease, and so might require less pesticides.
Plant geneticist Wes Jackson, with
the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, is experimenting with a variety
of plants from North American prairies. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s
Southern Plains Range Research Station in Woodward, Oklahoma, is working
on breeding a variant of eastern gamagass to replace sorghum as a foraging
planet. Meanwhile, the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, is
experimenting to develop a variant of wild triga to perhaps replace wheat
as a food crop.
The major obstacle in all
of these efforts is getting the perennials to retain the features which
make them advantageous while also making them appealing to farmers. Yields
for wild triga, for example, are currently only one-fifth that of wheat.
Annual crops have gone through thousands of years of selection for properties
valued by farmers and researchers developing perennials must try to duplicate
this in the lab in a much shorter period of time.