Bioenergy sorghum harvest (Texas A&M AgriLife Research, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
To compete in the energy market, biofuel feedstocks need to be high yielding and carbon neutral or negative. To avoid competition with existing food production systems, these crops will need to be grown on marginal lands with few inputs. Researchers plan to take a systems approach to dissect complex genotype by environment interactions in the promising bioenergy feedstock Sorghum bicolor, with a particular emphasis on the root microbiome. The overall objective of this project is to establish a foundational, systems-level understanding of plant, microbial, and environmental interactions that will lead to strategies for enhancing growth and sustainability of sorghum for biomass production through genetic and microbial adaptations to water and nitrogen limited environments.
Proposer’s Name: Daniel Schachtman, University of Nebraska