Kernza and Perennial Agriculture

Crop production systems face increasingly challenging circumstances, including depleted soil resources, a need to reduce negative environmental effects, fluctuating market conditions, and the stress of increasingly unpredictable environmental conditions. Given these circumstances, there is an urgent need to innovate, or even broadly rethink, cropping systems for adaptation and resilience to these multiple challenges. The answer may lie in the development and implementation of perennial cropping systems. Intermediate wheatgrass (IWG; Thinopyrum intermedium) is a cool-season, perennial grass that has been identified as a potential perennial grain crop. IWG, and it’s associated grain Kernza®, is the first commercially viable perennial crop in the United States to produce human-edible grain while also providing the ecosystem services associated with perenniality. We are collaborating with the Sustainable Cropping Systems Laboratory, the UMN Forever Green InitiativeThe Land Institute, and other partners on several projects to explore the soil related ecosystems services of this novel perennial grain crop. 

You can learn more about Kernza from our virtual 2020 MOSES field day videos

Specific Projects:

  • Kernza CAP: “Developing and deploying a perennial grain crop enterprise to improve environmental quality and rural prosperity” 
  • The potential of Kernza® cropping systems for adaptation of agricultural lands to extreme climate scenarios. 
  • Microbially inclusive carbon budgets, and greenhouse gas mitigation, when Kernza® is included in organically managed crop rotations.
  • The management of Kernza®, and associated soil quality and carbon budgets, to minimize yield loss over time.
  • Root growth and rhizosphere dynamics of Kernza® varieties.
  • The potential of Kernza® to mitigate nitrate pollution in Minnesota wellhead protection areas.
  • Stable isotope ecology tools to determine carbon and nitrogen flow through Kernza® cropping systems.
Photo of Kernza