Evolutionary Plant Breeding

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 23 seconds.

Plants are amazing. Their genetics... confusing. The current system of plant breeding creates monocultures. Those exacerbate the current threats that face agriculture.

Before we dive in, please think about this. As environments change, outputs become less reliable. The challenge in plant breeding is to create the best product in a variety of conditions.

Evolutionary plant breeding is a method of creating better plant breeds. To do this, breeders expose diverse populations to the forces of natural selection across geographical regions. This introduces genetic diversity, which creates a more stable and adaptable crop.

You might be thinking, "wait, why aren't we doing this?" This is a long and challenging process. This is a long and difficult process, even when we intervene. It takes up to five years to conduct the research and implementation is just as hard.

1 Company Lab - The Bread Lab at Washington State University

This lab uses Evolutionary Plant Breeding to improve the flavour of bread. This is just an awesome mission. Check out the video for more context!

Right now we tend to use boring all purpose flour. All purpose flour has a few traits; it generates high yields, has high levels of protein, is white in colour and has low mineral content.

The breeding industry has inadvertently bred seeds that take the joy out of bread. Conventional wheat breeding attempts to produce varieties that benefit the greatest number of farmers, producers, and consumers. This means that protein, micronutrients and texture all move towards a boring mixture. The bread mafia has bred the diversity out of the wheat gene pool.

Fortunately our friends at the Bread Lab have decided to use their skills for good. They've optimised their wheat for flavour and quality over yields. This is important work. First, good bread is great food. Next, they're taking the theory of evolutionary plant breeding and using it to achieve a specific goal. If it can be done for all the complexity of flavour, why can't it be to create more resilient crops?

Check out this video to learn about the Bread Lab!

2 Facts

Adapting to Climate Change isn't a single objective

Plant breeding needs a dynamic approach, to be a climate solution. Climate Change isn't just global temperatures rising. It affects a complex system and its impacts are unpredictable. These changes could include; temperature, rainfall, ground water levels, and CO2 levels.

The changing nature of these problems makes us need dynamic solutions. We recently spoke about GMO, which offers us short term bandaids and address one challenge at a time. An example of this are Bt crops, which are GMO that have seen their resistance to pests degrade over time. Evolution does have its advantages in this situation.

3 Crops contribute to 60% of the world's plant based calories

Rice, wheat and corn are the three most consumed crops across the globe. They've caused massive losses in biodiversity. Reduced biodiversity makes it impossible for crops to adapt to their environment. Pathogens become more dangerous, because they have massive swathes of food that is ill adapted to handle them.

Genetic diversity becomes less possible in fields where there is a single type of seed. For example, Bt corn (Monsanto's pest proof corn), is incapable of producing a lineage. This means that natural selection cannot occur over a long enough timeframe to make an impact.

3 Articles

Evolutionary Plant Breeding as a Response to the Complexity of Climate Change

This paper describes how Evolutionary Plant Breeding can create more stable populations. It does an excellent job outlining the circumstances of why Evolutionary Plant Breeding is a challenge worth pursuing.

Utilization of Evolutionary Plant Breeding Increases Stability and Adaptation of Winter Wheat Across Diverse Precipitation Zones

This paper was sent to me by someone I just met. It was the reason I decided to dive into the subject at all. One sentence stood out and showed me the power of this technology, "Using a breeding method that deploys genetic diversity that allows crops to adapt, reduces the progress of epidemics and increases yield stability."

Evolutionary Plant Breeding in Cereals—Into a New Era

This was the paper, which most refined my understanding of Evolutionary Plant Biology at a more technical level. It dives deep into the genetics of plants and how traits are passed on.