Recipient Organization
MIDDLE TENNESSEE STATE UNIVERSITY
1301 EAST MAIN STREET
MURFREESBORO,TN 37132
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The increasing global human population and an increasingly more variable climatic condition ahev put enormous pressure on governments, industries, scientists, and most importantly, farmers. The resultant effect of this pressure is soil quality degradation and a reduction in the quality of farm produce and economic outlook for the farmers. Additionally, although non-land grant institutions (like Middle Tennessee State University) produce over 40% of agricultural bacalaureate degress, opportunities offering early exposure of students to the concepts, processes, and results of perennial plant breeding and their ecosystem and health benefits are currently lacking at these institutions. Therefore, this project will use an interdisciplinary approach to enhance the educational capacity and educational capability and research collaborations of a non-land grant college of agriculture (Middle Tennessee State University; MTSU) with a leading perennial plant breeding institution (The Land Institute; TLI) and a flagship land-grant institution (University of Kentucky; UK) to establish a perennial grain crop research/demonstration fields at MTSU for evaluating the agronomic performance, soil health, medicinal properties, and fermentation quality of Kernza, perennial sorghum, and silflower. Further, we will also collaborate with faculty at UK and grain producers in Tennessee and Kentucky to establish perennial grain production plots, and leverage existing projects at TLI to develop educational programs involving faculty members, scientists, and students across participating institutions. Additionally, this project will initiate MTSU Summer Research Apprentice and TLI Breeder Shadowing internship programs focused on perennial grain crop and soil health research.The project activities include student internship and research experience, cropping systems and soil health research, and food processing and health benefits of perennial grains. The expected outputs from these activities include experienced graduates in plant breeding, perennial systems, and soil health, establishment of a perennial grain center at MTSU, and adoption of sustainable cropping systems. Effects of the project include improved quality of agricultural graduates, support for local producers, and increase in the acreage of perennial grains and other sustainable cropping systems. This project meets the educational(laboratory and field-based internships in agricultural sciences), research (interdisciplinary research addressing systems-oriented, critical issues), and outreach (inform landowners on sustainable systems) needs areas. Overall, this project will enhance the quality and diversity of MTSU agriculture graduates.
Animal Health Component
55%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
43%
Applied
55%
Developmental
2%
Goals / Objectives
The overall goal of this project is to establish the Southeast Regional Perennial Grain Research and Education Center at MTSU for enhancing the educational capacity and research collaboration with the leading perennial grain plant breeding institution (TLI) and a flagship land-grant university (University of Kentucky, UK).This joint venture will 1) enhance the scientific understanding of and develop best practices for growing perennial grain crops in the climate transition zone of the Southeastern US, 2) better educate students and the general public about the benefits and challenges of perennial grain crop production and value-added products, and 3) provide a collaborative research platform and a comprehensive educational program that ultimately enhances the capacity of the plant and food science programs at MTSU. Three research/demonstration sites and two internship programs will be developed through this project.Task (Objective) 1: Establish perennial grain crop research/demonstration fields at the MTSU Research and Experiential Learning Center in the Cumberland Basin area, focusing on Kernza®, perennial sorghum, and silflower. Evaluate the agronomic performance, soil health, medicinal properties, and fermentation quality of various perennial grain crops.Task (Objective) 2: Collaborate with faculty members at UK and grain producers in eastern Tennessee to establish perennial grain production plots in the Cumberland Plateau/Valley region.Task (Objective) 3: Leverage existing projects at TLI conducted in the Midwest agronomic region and develop collaborative educational programs involving faculty members, scientists, and students across all participating institutions.Task (Objective) 4: Initiate the MTSU Summer Research Apprentice and TLI Breeder Shadowing internship programs in collaboration with both TLI and UK, focusing on perennial grain crop research and soil health.
Project Methods
Cropping system productivity and soil health methodology: Three perennial grain testing sites will be established in Tennessee and Kentucky. The first site will be located at the MTSU Experiential Learning and Research Center in Lascassas, Rutherford CO. TN. The Lindemann's Farm (second site) is located close to Grandview, Rhea CO. TN. The University of Kentucky Research and Education Center at Princeton, KY will be the third site. For each site, the experiment will be conducted to evaluate three perennial grain crops (Kernza®, perennial sorghum, and silfower) in terms of their 1) biomass production and grain yield, 2) common insect and pathogen issues, and 3) contribution to soil health compared to their annual counterparts (winter wheat, annual sorghum, and annual sunflower; respectively). A randomized complete block design with 3 blocks and factorial arrangement will be established with each 5×15 m2 plot. For annual grain crops, field production management practices will be determined according to University of Tennessee (UT) Crop Production Guidelines. For perennial grain crops, all seeds will be provided by TLI from populations chosen for their high biomass potential. Similar crop management practices will be adopted according to the UT Crop Guidelines. Biomass samples will be randomly collected from outside of the harvesting area before grain harvest and dried at 60 ºC to a constant weight for calculating dry matter weight. A subsample of grains and biomass will be ground to determine C and N concentrations using an Elementar vario Max CN analyzer. Finally, in addition to standard weed, pathogen, and insect chemical control, we will undertake field scouting each year to locate, identify, rank and document the severity of pests, weeds, and diseases, and employ corrective strategies across all sites with regular monitoring to verify the success of the corrective measures.The first set of soil samples will be collected just before the planting of the crops and will provide baseline soil properties. Other soil samples will be collected after plant establishment and every year. Soil samples will be collected from each plot at 0-10, 10-20, and 20-30 cm depths and analyzed for soil bulk density (core method), water retention (pressure chamber method), saturated hydraulic conductivity (constant and falling head method), soil texture (pipette method), and soil organic carbon (combustion method in a Skalar® PrimacsSNC-100 analyzer currently available at MTSU). Another set of soil samples will be collected from each plot for the determination of nitrate-N, Urea-N, Phosphate, Potassium, Ammonia, and Calcium using a Skalar BluVision® Discrete Automated Analyzer that will be purchased using funds from the proposed project. Soil pH will be analyzed by potentiometry. Soil microbial community structure will be determined on another set of samples collected from the aforementioned plots using the Phospholipids Fatty Acid Analysis (PLFA). Available software can automatically identify all the PLFAs in a sample, categorize them by microbial origin and perform biomass calculations and ratios. Data will be analyzed using the PROC MIX procedure in SAS software (ver. 9) to determine the treatment effects on all the crop and soil variables described above. Mean separation will be carried out using Fisher's protected LSD (α=0.05). By combining all results, we expect to understand the suitability of each perennial grain species in individual environments, potential insects and pathogen issues, and soil contributions in comparison to their annual counterparts. Existing outreach events (farm open house events, field days, and agritourism events) at the MTSU Experiential Learning and Research Center and the University of Kentucky Research and Education Center will be used to interact with country-level focus groups and the general public about perennial grain crops and the benefits of converting to perennial systems. Drs. Haruna (soil scientist) and Cui (agronomist) have published over forty peer reviewed articles, cumulatively, on related topics and will leverage their experience to achieve this goal.Fermentation science methodology: Drs. Johnston and Ku (CO-PDs), will bring their experience and knowledge to bear on the enzyme kinetics and bioprocessing of results of sorghum-Koji based multiple parallel fermentation as well as applications of the procedures developed in the Tennessee fermented food production industries. They will produce new sorghum-koji for corn saccharification and produce both standard and sorghum-koji fermented whiskey and bourbon. Drs. Johnston and Ku will use the 3000+ square food MT-Fermentation Laboratory, which is equipped with batch fermenters, lab scale distillation units, anaerobic and aerobic chambers, an autoclave, centrifuges, a shaking incubator, chemical hoods, a 96-well plate reader, an automated tangential flow nano/microfilter bioseparation system, an HPLC, a GC, and two standard microbial incubators for this research project.Phytochemistry and Nutraceutical study methodology: Plant extracts for the study will be obtained by extraction of powdered raw material using different solvents in a sonication-assisted extractor and a rotary evaporator. Extracts of the perennial crops will be evaluated for total phenolic content and total flavonoid content and compared to the content levels of their equivalent annual crops. The antioxidant of the plant extracts will be investigated using the 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) scavenging assay and will also be compared to that of the corresponding annual crops. In addition, a panel of more than ten plant pathogen species, including Alternaria, Fusarium, and phytophthora species, have been isolated, identified, and cultured at Dr. Gao's lab. The antifungal activity of silflower essential oil against these plant pathogens will be investigated using an agar dilution assay.Agricultural education methodology: We will work with Dr. Streit Krug (Co-PD), and Dr. Nicholson (Education Design Technician) to compile subsets of educational lessons, videos, and other resources housed at https://kernza.org and the Perennial Practice educational video channel that could be directly used for classroom teaching.Additionally, the team members at MTSU (Dr. Cui, Gao, Johnston, Haruna, Ku, and Mosley) will work collectively with New Perennials Publishing to incorporate their books, pamphlets, and educational materials into our instructional content, particularly leveraging those geared towards classroom teaching purposes. We will also establish the MTSU Summer Research Apprentice and TLI Breeder Shadowing Programs in collaboration with both TLI and UK focusing on perennial grain crop research and soil health, where students can earn summer stipend and credit hours towards their degree completion. All participants will participate in activities such as data collection, analysis, presentation and discussion of facts, and assisting with planned educational, cultural and recreational events. After the internship, mentor and student feedback will be solicited and applied to improve the experiences of the next internship cohort. Finally, led by Dr. Mosley at MTSU, with subject matter experts from UK and TLI, we will produce a perennial grain crops open educational resource to encourage greater inclusion of perennial grain content in related undergraduate coursework (e.g., Introduction to Soil Science, Agroecology, Agronomy) across the country.All research outcomes and educational products of this project will be communicated to multiple stakeholder groups through multiple media outlets involving the three participating institutions, other government and non-profit organizations, and the participating producer, we expect to empower more producers in the southeast US region to be able to adopt and transition to more perennial grain crop systems.