Higher Yielding Perennials Point the Way to New Crops

摘要

Today, almost all of our major crops are herbaceous annuals—plants such as corn and soybeans that have to be replanted every year. But even though the costs of this constant replanting are high, in both monetary and environmental terms, few agricultural scientists have tried to replace these annuals with more long-lived perennials. That's mainlvbecause perennials are thought to put so much energy into maintaining the sturdy underground roots they need to last through the winter that not enough is left to produce bountiful harvests of seed grains. But recent results from a few agricultural pioneers suggest that is not necessarily the case.