MU Part of $6.6 Million Research Project on Cover Crops

Apr 11, 2024

By Linda Geist

University of Missouri is part of a $6.6 million research initiative to promote soil health through cover crops.

Rob Myers, MU adjunct associate professor and north-central regional director of extension programs for the USDA’s Sustainable Agriculture Research Education program, was the lead organizer in obtaining funding for the multistate project.

Myers, a national expert on cover crops, spoke at the March 22 project launch at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Myers said the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation will lead the initiative. The Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research contributed a $2.2 million grant for the project, with the remaining funding provided by the Noble Foundation.

MU will receive $200,000 for cover crop germ plasm screening and evaluation at MU’s Bradford Research Center in Columbia. Soil scientist Kerry Clark leads the MU effort. She will work with Myers and others on the multiagency project.

Myers said representatives of land-grant universities including MU, seed industries, the USDA Agricultural Research Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service, farmers and others will work together to identify and introduce key traits to improve crop yields and soil health.

Missouri has an estimated 600,000 acres of cover crops. Nationally, the U.S. should surpass 20 million acres of cover crops planted annually by 2020, according to Myers. “The new cover crop varieties developed through this national project will be pivotal to expanding cover crop use on tens of millions of acres, protecting and improving our nation’s soil resources.”

Cover crops reduce soil erosion, increase soil fertility, and aid in pest, weed and disease control. They also improve water availability and crop diversity. Researchers will study and compare small grains, annual legumes and brassica cover crop germ plasm to find the best way to improve soil health.

Field trials will be conducted initially at five sites in Missouri, Nebraska, Maryland, North Carolina and Oklahoma, with tests at additional locations in later stages of the project. The broad geographic area allows researchers to study how cover crops perform in different environments.

Myers said experienced cover crop experts in these states would work with scientists at the Noble Foundation. Research includes traditional and advanced plant breeding and evaluation, with introduction of key traits to improve crop performance and soil enhancement.

Researchers want to identify the best cover crop species and varieties to promote to farmers and ranchers. They will share results with the public through national meetings and peer-reviewed publications.

Source : missouri.edu

Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”