Crop Breeding For Biological Interactions
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
One of the headwinds facing organic and regenerative farmers is the fact that all of the latest genetics are optimized for conventional systems. There hasn’t been a reason to optimize the plants ability to source its own nutrition because we’ve been able to supply all the nutrition synthetically. Dr. Erin Silva sees this as a real opportunity.
Silva… “ 30% of the energy that the crop produces through photosynthesis actually gets pumped back into the soil system. So the plant is effectively feeding the soil biology. So you can imagine from an evolutionary standpoint how important that robust, strong soil biology is in terms of the crop. It's in its acquisition to nutrients, essentially its immune system and be more resistant to diseases and insects. And if the crop has lost that ability through breeding within systems where they don't necessarily need to, that same degree those sorts of associations due to the application of synthetic nutrients, synthetic fertilizers or disease management with fungicides, they don't need to have that cost-expended soil biology.”
Silva and many others would like to see genetics develop with these natural biological processes in mind.
