Latest / Hydroponics Daily / Perennial Cereals: Are Kernza and Perennial Rice the Future of Food?

Transcript

Perennial Cereals: Are Kernza and Perennial Rice the Future of Food? · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to the podcast. Today's podcast is a joint episode
• 0:05
  between Serial Killers, our podcast about arable crops and hydroponics daily,
• 0:11
  our podcast all about hydroponics because it relates to both forms of growing
• 0:15
  crops, indoor and outdoor farming.
• 0:18
  And yeah, I'm your host, Dr. Russell Sharp, the founder of Utrema Limited,
• 0:22
  and we sell fertilizers, biostimulants and organic biopesticides to both types of farmers.
• 0:28
  And today we're talking about the utopian world of perennial arable crops and
• 0:34
  whether they could be a crop of the future.
• 0:38
  Now, you may not be aware of this, but there are a number of perennial cereal crops.
• 0:45
  They are small, but they are commercial and you can buy them.
• 0:49
  They're not in the mainstream commodity market though. They're not sold on the markets.
• 0:54
  There's a couple of crops that have moved beyond pure research and
• 0:57
  there are many many more that are in the research stage so the
• 1:01
  main one you may have heard of is called ken kernza
• 1:04
  and that is a registered trademark because it is owned by
• 1:07
  a company and it's classed as an intermediate wheatgrass
• 1:11
  it's the most visible commercial perennial cereal-like grain in north america
• 1:15
  it's sold in niche value-added few foods and it's also put into some beverages
• 1:21
  products a lot of ipas contain this kernza and it's grown at a modest scale
• 1:26
  across multiple US states.
• 1:29
  Drawn you know commercial scaling is drawn by the brand pull
• 1:32
  supply chain building rather than the agronomics
• 1:35
  and the fantastic thing about the crop now why
• 1:39
  would you want to grow a perennial cereal i should have talked about from
• 1:42
  the start well basically you don't need to plow and
• 1:45
  you don't need to sow seeds every year so both
• 1:49
  from a economics perspective you know you're reducing your
• 1:52
  diesel bill by not plowing you're reducing your bills
• 1:55
  by not buying seed but also from a regenerative agriculture
• 1:59
  perspective if you're not plowing the soil every year
• 2:02
  then you are helping build soil biology and you
• 2:05
  are potentially not destroying
• 2:08
  this you're not eroding the soil so fantastic from
• 2:11
  that perspective and also potentially you
• 2:15
  can get your crop off to a better start by the fact that it's
• 2:18
  got a lot of biomass alive under the
• 2:20
  ground in the spring so potentially somewhere like the uk where
• 2:23
  we have cold springs then potentially it could be
• 2:26
  good so yeah something like kernza could be
• 2:29
  a good thing the problem is that current yields are typically
• 2:32
  well below annual wheat in many environments and you've
• 2:36
  got the issues of managing multi-year stands so as well as the the crop building
• 2:40
  up biomass you've got the potential for building up pest and disease in that
• 2:44
  field there is no rotation so that currently is a limitation in its growth Imagine
• 2:51
  you've got a barley yellow virus in it,
• 2:54
  then that would be in it until you kill the plant.
• 2:57
  So your seven years suddenly goes out the window.
• 2:59
  So there are a number of different challenges when growing these sorts of crops.
• 3:03
  There's perennial rice as well as wheat.
• 3:06
  That really stands out because it could, you know, parts of China...
• 3:10
  It's growing rapidly. There's rapid growth, more than 9,000 hectares by 2020 and 15,000 by 2021.
• 3:20
  So a number of small holding farms are growing perennial rice.
• 3:24
  The advantages in labour, because obviously you hand plant rice in paddy fields,
• 3:29
  and the establishment costs and challenges.
• 3:31
  So potentially perennial rice has more of
• 3:34
  a more of a economic uptick
• 3:38
  to it than than wheat there are
• 3:41
  other perennial crops perennial rye what i've
• 3:44
  looked at is perennial sorghum because there are a number of perennial varieties
• 3:50
  and sorghum is an interesting crop it's a big crop it's a it's much larger than
• 3:56
  say wheat and it's an industrial crop often it's sort of non-food use It goes
• 4:01
  into a lot of white spirits.
• 4:03
  So a lot of the sorghum that's grown in the US grows to produce white spirits in China.
• 4:08
  That's not the stuff you use when you're decorating. White spirits is the.
• 4:12
  Is it called beige i think in chinese i think it's baijiol
• 4:16
  which means white alcohol check out
• 4:20
  check out my chinese mandarin spirit knowledge off
• 4:23
  the top of my head that as well haven't done any googling do speak
• 4:26
  a bit of chinese well i can read a bit of chinese i can't speak it because i
• 4:29
  can't do the um the tones but baijiol that's
• 4:33
  a white spirit and that's what sorghum's used for i grew
• 4:36
  some perennial sorghum and what
• 4:39
  supposedly was perennial sorghum i got the seeds got my uh
• 4:42
  colleagues who sell gold leaf
• 4:45
  over in the us the the ultimate hydroponic
• 4:49
  fertilizer to send me some seeds however it's not
• 4:52
  hardy in the uk so it's mainly a crop if
• 4:55
  it's going to be a crop for southern states of the us maybe sort
• 4:59
  of mediterranean regions of europe so there's
• 5:04
  options as well for grain and forage so you could potentially
• 5:07
  once you've harvested the crop set that that field
• 5:10
  over to forage and still get you know put some
• 5:13
  animals on it get some return there and it still grow for the second year there
• 5:18
  are a number of different organizations working on perennial sorghum but it's
• 5:22
  not sort of widely established commercial grain grain and the other advantage
• 5:28
  of sorghum is it's can be used in.
• 5:32
  Bird conservation or if you're into hunting you
• 5:35
  can use it for as a crop for feeding
• 5:40
  and allowing your birds to you know your sorts of
• 5:43
  pheasants and obviously some partridges to
• 5:46
  take cover and things like that so that's the
• 5:49
  current state of perennial our crops
• 5:53
  at the moment but what could be
• 5:55
  done with genetic modification or gene editing sort
• 5:58
  of CRISPR technology what are the likely targets over
• 6:01
  the next several years if people were to put their mind to
• 6:04
  it so the big wins what's feasible
• 6:07
  reduce seed seed shattering that's
• 6:10
  a big problem increase the seed size plant architecture
• 6:14
  and improve the free threshing
• 6:18
  traits easy for me to say improve synchronization of
• 6:21
  flowering because these are all issues with perennial arable crops
• 6:24
  and reduce lodging and when
• 6:27
  you look at a lot of these crops like kernza they
• 6:34
  are a bit sparse i say a
• 6:36
  bit sparse they're very sparse compared to a conventional arable
• 6:40
  crop and there's a lot of bare earth and so producing lodging is going to be
• 6:45
  a key one because they there's just a lot of air in between the plants and increasing
• 6:51
  the density they can be planted at optimizing the fertilization that's going
• 6:55
  to be key stabilizing the yield across years,
• 6:58
  knowing what the year is.
• 7:01
  Could the genes for perenniality be put into more commercial varieties that
• 7:09
  are resistant to things like rust and other things like that,
• 7:11
  or could it be the other way around?
• 7:14
  Could some more of the commercial genes be put into the perennial crop?
• 7:19
  And could they be done by gene editing rather
• 7:21
  than genitrogen modification so could it could a tweak
• 7:24
  in one or two genes induce perenniality in
• 7:28
  a annual crop that's something to be looked at
• 7:31
  obviously there's you know you know it's breeding for
• 7:34
  pest disease resistance but that they're they're
• 7:37
  given they're in every breeding program for
• 7:41
  any type of cereal crop and so yeah that's
• 7:45
  something the eu do the eu allow kernza
• 7:48
  that's a good question let me check yes it
• 7:51
  looks like it's allowed in the eu it has to be labeled as you
• 7:54
  know wheat allergen but it doesn't fall foul
• 7:57
  of the eu novel food regulations which
• 8:00
  stop just anyone introducing any plants and
• 8:03
  saling it as food which is an issue i think
• 8:07
  kernza is is bred in
• 8:10
  kansas by the non-profit land institute
• 8:13
  and they're actively researching it
• 8:16
  the plants since 2010 they've been
• 8:20
  transferred transfer trying to transform it trying to breed it from a small
• 8:23
  seeded wild species into a high yielding domesticated
• 8:26
  grain but you can remember annual wheat has you know got centuries
• 8:30
  or even not thousands of years on this plant so it's
• 8:33
  a slow process but hopefully they will eventually be able to produce a viable
• 8:36
  sustainable alternative to annual wheat which is the world's most widely grown
• 8:40
  crop and one in five of your calories come from wheat so think about pasta and.
• 8:45
  Things like that i've been told i've got to pick up some pasta for tea tonight so i'll go and do that.
• 8:50
  It is a hot topic. There was an article in The Guardian, the British newspaper,
• 8:56
  saying, soil is more important than oil inside the perennial grain revolution.
• 9:00
  I'm not sure what it's got to do with oil, but there you go.
• 9:03
  So it's a hot topic as we speak this week.
• 9:06
  The plant that Kernza comes from is native to the prairies of Kansas, and that makes sense.
• 9:12
  The other advantage I missed is that you've obviously got those mycorrhizal
• 9:16
  and beneficial microbe connections, which we sort of ignore when it comes to
• 9:20
  cereal crops because they're in the ground for such a short amount of time.
• 9:23
  It's not really worth inoculating with the mycorrhizae or promoting the mycorrhizae,
• 9:28
  but if it's a perennial crop, then it's certainly worth it.
• 9:31
  And then imbuing those characteristics, the phosphorus solubilisation and things
• 9:35
  like that, that mycorrhizae are so great for.
• 9:37
  And obviously if the plant is living for multiple years, it's going to produce
• 9:40
  a much larger root system.
• 9:42
  And so an annual wheat plant will produce roots that go down to half a meter deep.
• 9:48
  Kernza, another perennial grasses, they can go down to three meters deep.
• 9:52
  So you think of a prairie, you don't think of much plant here on the top,
• 9:56
  but the actual biomass, the roots going down, go crazy deep if allowed to.
• 10:01
  The soil is conducive to that.
• 10:03
  So that work's going on in Kansas. It's also being undertaken in Ukraine, which is great to hear.
• 10:08
  China for perennial rice. And
• 10:11
  then Uganda is where a lot of the perennial sorghum research
• 10:14
  is undertaking so what's this got to do with hydroponics i
• 10:17
  think this could be a potential crop for hydroponics because
• 10:21
  you it's a small plant compared
• 10:24
  to per to annual wheat and you
• 10:28
  could potentially get multiple crops per year
• 10:31
  in an indoor facility it's high
• 10:35
  value because it's going into things like ipa and and health food stores it's
• 10:40
  so it's not you know the price you can pay as many multiples on on conventional
• 10:46
  wheat so it's that sort of feeds into that niche high value end use we talk
• 10:51
  about on hydroponics daily our podcast many days and.
• 10:55
  I think producing a stable crop that can be grown and perennially in a hydroponic
• 11:02
  setup, that would be fantastic because you wouldn't have those time to set up costs,
• 11:09
  the establishment costs, which we do like legal cannabis or pops or things like this.
• 11:15
  It could be potentially, you could crop it multiple times or even continuously, I don't know.
• 11:21
  So worth getting some seeds if you can get some seeds
• 11:23
  of perennial rice kernza perennial
• 11:27
  sorghum i think i've got some i think it was oh i'm looking at some
• 11:30
  now i've got a bag so opposite me with perennial sorghum
• 11:33
  seeds if you would like some then please email me
• 11:36
  and i can get some posted to you
• 11:39
  just give us a like on apple podcast there
• 11:42
  you go that's all i asked for if you're not on apple podcasts then just
• 11:45
  give us a follow i hope you've liked today's episode on perennial
• 11:48
  cereals if you would
• 11:51
  like to check out any fertilizers biostimulants or
• 11:54
  organic biopesticides for use in growing your perennial arable
• 11:57
  crops or your annual arable crops
• 12:01
  then check out utreema.co.uk we produce
• 12:04
  products for arable crops hydroponic crops
• 12:08
  sports turf lawn care if you're growing a
• 12:10
  plant we produce a unique novel fertilizer for
• 12:13
  that and you won't find that technology anywhere else and
• 12:17
  we're more than happy to answer any of your technical questions you may have about
• 12:20
  growing crops any challenges you've got just give us an email or
• 12:23
  a phone call or dm us i'm more than happy to help you might not have the answer
• 12:28
  we might not even have a product we might recommend somebody else's products
• 12:31
  but hopefully we can help you that's been serial killers and hydroponics daily
• 12:35
  for today i hope you've enjoyed it and i'll speak to you again hopefully soon
• 12:39
  if it's hydroponics daily i'll speak to you tomorrow because it's daily podcast.
• 12:42
  Serial killers, not so much. Anyway, that's enough of the waffle. Goodbye.