Researchers have been investigating the environmental benefits of sorghum, the world's fifth-most-cultivated cereal grain, to help understand its molecular structure and improve breeding processes.
It may not be immediately familiar to you, but sorghum is the powerhouse of ancient grains. It provides nutritional and environmental benefits while proving resilient to extreme temperatures and drought conditions.
A report shared by Phys.org detailed recent work by Spain's Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics that covered drought tolerance and sorghum breeding methods, which could advance the cultivation of this inherently hardy crop.
"Our goal was to equip the sorghum community with not only cutting-edge molecular tools to accelerate sorghum breeding but also some key target genes essential for developing drought-resistant crops," said Juan B. Fontanet-Manzaneque, a lead author of the related studies.
The researchers identified mutagens in the protein Sorghum bicolor brassinosteroid receptor (SbBRI1), highlighting a molecular mechanism for enhancing drought resistance. This discovery holds promise for advancing climate-resilient agriculture.
Additionally, new tools and methods were discovered that could enable breeding techniques such as gene editing to accelerate crop improvement, as the report detailed. Previous efforts were ineffective and limited the study of certain sorghum varieties, but the new protocol using Agrobacterium tumefaciens — a bacterium that creates tumors in plants — has changed that.
Sorghum is increasingly recognized as a staple food in many parts of the world because of its climate resilience. It has been cultivated in Africa for centuries for its nutritional value and fortitude and is now growing in popularity across Europe for those qualities, as the report explained.
The crop requires 30% less water than others, making it ideal for arid climates and reducing the strain on precious water resources.
When grown with reduced soil tillage, it becomes a useful carbon sink. Sorghum's roots can grow six feet or more, limiting the amount of carbon that could otherwise get released into the atmosphere with shallower tilling practices.
"One of the tricky things with carbon sequestration is that often soil bacteria will take up carbon but release it back into the atmosphere. The deeper the roots, the more likely you are to be able to keep more carbon in the soil, while trying to keep it from going back into the atmosphere," said Peggy Lemaux, professor of cooperative extension in plant and microbial biology at the University of California, Berkeley, in an article by Innovative Genomics.
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Grocery stores 🛒 "And compared to sorghum, the roots of rice are really wimpy. Corn roots are wimpy too. With its deep roots, sorghum has it going," Lemaux added.
The world is increasingly relying on scientific expertise in its quest for food security amid a changing climate, and the findings from the team at CRAG could have far-reaching benefits across the agricultural sector.
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