October 30, 2017 The Nation. 21
ing of pollen, from the male parts of flowers onto the feathery,
sticky female parts. But advances in genomics—the sequencing
of DNA—over the last 15 years have made it far easier to tweak
Kernza. Almost all of the grain’s genome has now been mapped.
Once breeders have a genetic blueprint, they can track down the
genes that control particular traits and select individuals with ge-
netic stock that codes for, say, fat seeds or resistance to disease.
In the last decade, Kernza’s potential yield has gone up by 10
percent annually. In 2011, the Land Institute began collaborating
with the University of Minnesota to research the grain. Kernza
has since become a major initiative at the university, spanning
several academic departments, including plant genetics, agrono-
my, and food science.
This year, General Mills offered the university half a million
dollars to study several aspects of Kernza, including how it might
help store carbon and organic matter in the soil. The company
wants to reach what it calls “sustainable emission levels” by 2050
and hopes that Kernza will be part of the means to get there.
Meanwhile, the Land Institute, the University of Minnesota, and
their partners are trying to hammer out other varieties of peren-
nial crops: a rice being tested in China, an oilseed akin to canola, a
flaxseed native to North America. And a small number of research
programs into perennials have been started around the world.
The Bread Lab, a program of Washington State University, has
been developing its own version of a wheatlike perennial called
Salish Blue. The result of a 20-year effort to cross annual wheat
with perennial wheatgrass, Salish Blue lives for about two years,
and farmers in northwest Washington are now beginning to grow
it in their fields.
About four miles northeast of the Birchwood Cafe, you can
find Kernza in an ongoing state of metamorphosis, in test plots
at the University of Minnesota’s Agricultural Experiment Station.
When I visit the plots, it’s a clear blue afternoon at the end of the
summer growing season, when corn ears are heavy with ripe ker-
nels. The Kernza is congregated in a half-acre plot amid a patch-
work of experimental fields of corn and soybeans. In comparison
with its neighbors, the Kernza looks rangy and feral, with stems at
various heights and leaning at odd angles. But up close, it’s a hand-
some plant: golden-headed, with bluish-green stems gathered in
bunches like a prairie grass, and sprinting to four or five feet tall.
Prabin Bajgain, a university plant geneticist, and his colleague,
Jacob Jungers, an agronomist, lead me into the center of the field,
where I notice that half of the bunches have had their spikes
lopped off, and a few of these are streaked with orange paint.
The paint marks the winners, those that have been weighed and
measured for seed size and yield and could be used to develop fu-
ture batches of Kernza. In August, Bajgain took seeds from about
900 plants back to the lab, selected the best ones, and plotted out
pieces of their genetic code. This analysis helps the breeders put
together a set of statistical predictions about which plants will be
the hardiest and best-yielding in order to narrow down the choice
of which ones to replant the following year.
Every year, the transformation of Kernza seems stunningly
fast, at least on the slow time scales that plant breeders are ac-
customed to. Since 2001, the potential size of a Kernza seed has
doubled, and scientists hope to lengthen its productive lifespan
from five to 10 years. Jungers plucks a spikelet from the grass
head, peels a few of the kernels out of their husks, and holds them
out in his palm. They are nearly as big as grains of rice, although
I’ve seen some about the size of caraway seeds.
Then, in a sudden gesture, Bajgain leans forward and flings his