A Tale of Two Genes

Every fall, genetic triggers in each cell of a wheat plant signal the plant’s own death. And what comes next is a sad soil story. Farmers must clear the dead plants away to plant a new crop, leaving the soil bare and open to serious erosion until the new crop grows up. Researchers at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, are trying to turn this tragedy into a success story by turning those triggers off. They are working to create a perennial wheat plant—a plant that lives through the winter year after year—by using the genes of its wild perennial relatives. Perennial wheat would eliminate the need to clear the land, and that change could save tons of soil every year.

"Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals. Food chains are the living channels which conduct energy upward; death and decay return it to the soil. The circuit is not closed … but it is a sustained circuit, like a slowly augmented revolving fund of life.”

Aldo Leopold, ecologist