Fungus May Help Grow Drought-Resistant Crops
By Sara Jerome,
@sarmje
A new agricultural method may boost crop production by making plants more drought-resistant. The secret ingredient? Fungus.
"Imagine a world, just a few decades away, where once-fertile cropland is baked and starved of rain by ongoing climate change," the Kansas City Star reported. Problematic? Maybe not: "Just add fungus."
The idea is that crops be "treated with fungi that alter the plant’s physiology so that, over time, the plants become more efficient at metabolizing water, nutrients and sunlight. The fungus also protects them from oxidization, a byproduct of heat stress," the Washington Post reported.
Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies, a startup, offers a seed treatment product called BioEnsure that aims to make this possible. CEO Rusty Rodriguez explained how it works.
“What happens when certain types of fungus are transferred over is that the plants photosynthesize more, but with less,” he said, per the Post.
This may be good news for farmers struggling through an era of water-scarcity.
"As the world warms, shifting climate patterns are already stressing large swaths of the land that have long been reliably arable and bountiful. Like Columbia, Brazil is seeing lower crop yields due to disease and weaker rain cycles that typically come in from the humid Amazon region in the north. This year’s rainy season was officially the driest since they began keeping record 84 years ago," the report said.
So far, the method has showed promising results.
"In 2012, a trial of BioEnsure-treated corn in Michigan during a drought that ravaged the Midwest produced an 85 percent higher yield. A separate trial in a greenhouse found that BioEnsure-treated crops used a third less water," the report said.
The product has been in development for years. "After spending decades perfecting and field-testing the formulation, Adaptive is preparing to bring BioEnsure to market this fall. It’s an innovation that, if successfully adopted by the agricultural industry, could not only help ensure global food safety, but reduce our dependence on harmful chemicals," Wired reported.
USAID, the federal agency dedicated to foreign aid, sees the product as promising. Adaptive Symbiotic Technologies was recently nominated for USAID funding.
“We believe it holds the potential to improve the lives of millions of people who need to produce food in difficult conditions,” said Christian Holmes, USAID global water coordinator at United States Agency for International Development.
“We reject the idea that there’s a point of no return,” Holmes said, per Wired. “What we need are breakthrough solutions like this that can reach millions of people really quickly.”
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