A Field Research Network to Address Looming Grain Failures

Across the United States, record quantities of corn and soybeans have been harvested in recent years. However, according to a BioScience article (http://io.aibs.org/gst) by David Gustafson of the International Life Sciences Institute Research Foundation and his colleagues, this trend may soon change. "By midcentury," the interdisciplinary team reports, "temperatures in Illinois will likely be closer to those of today's mid-South, and precipitation will range somewhere between that of today's East Texas and that of the Carolinas." Likewise, vapor-pressure deficits, which are a measure of the atmosphere's drying power, will also increase, potentially further stressing crop yields. Declining crop production in the US Midwest could have global-scale implications, warn the authors: "What happens to Midwest farmers affects the world. Midwest farmers produce the dominant share of US contributions to the global corn (35%) and soybean (30%) traded volumes." To address these rising threats more efficiently and cost effectively, the authors propose a new, coordinated network of field research sites at which precise data on the performance of current and future crops, cropping systems, and farm-level management practices in the US Midwest would be gathered. The authors also highlight the necessity of field research as opposed to its growth-chamber counterpart, arguing that recent evidence has "demonstrated our inability to extrapolate growth-chamber and greenhouse results to field si...
Source: BioScience Press Releases - Category: Biology Source Type: news