Can crops become more efficient?
Michigan State, Eastern Michigan researchers have won a grant to probe a natural process that saps plants’ productivity
Plants were evolving for hundreds of millions of years before humans started cultivating them for food.
So when the first farmers showed up some 12,000 years ago, plants had already picked up some inefficiencies that is, adaptations that helped the plants survive but also limited their productivity as crops.
MSU Assistant Professor Berkley Walker
Enter Michigan State University s Berkley Walker, an assistant professor in the College of Natural Science’sDepartment of Plant Biology. Along with Aaron Liepman at Eastern Michigan University, Walker is leading a new, nearly $1 million National Science Foundation grant effort to better understand one of those inefficiencies with the hopes of turning the tide.