Climate change, rising sea levels and depleting freshwater reserves are causing a rapid increase in soil salinization, resulting in higher levels of salt in the ground. As staple crops almost exclusively rely on freshwater, increased soil salinity threatens future food security. The Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR) is providing a $985,000 Seeding Solutions grant to the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) to assess the domestication potential of Distichlis palmeri (D. palmeri), a saltwater-loving plant traditionally consumed in the tidal plains around the Gulf of California in Mexico, which would help transition salt-degraded lands into productive, sustainable agriculture ecosystems. KAUST provided matching funds for a total investment of $1,984,237.
“Rising sea levels threaten coastal agriculture just as much as coastal cities, and meeting our nutritional needs in the face of increasingly salinized farmland requires us to expand production of underutilized crops,” said Dr. Angela Records, FFAR chief scientific officer. “This research will allow us to develop new agriculture possibilities in seawater-inundated and salt-degraded land.”With over 50% of irrigated land affected by soil salination, tens of millions of hectares of land are abandoned annually. Researchers have attempted to breed saline tolerance into commonly consumed crops, but this work has yielded limited success. D. palmeri, known by Indigenous peoples as nipa, has grain characteristics and nutritional content similar to rice and wheat, and was an important food for the Cocopah nation in the Rio Colorado delta. While it could be a suitable crop for soil and irrigation water with high saline levels, not enough is currently known about the species to allow large-scale breeding and develop improved varieties for production.
KAUST researchers, led by Dr. Jesse Poland, professor of plant science in the Center for Desert Agriculture, are joined by key collaborators from the native territory of D. palmeri in Mexico including Dr. Ángela Corina Hayano Kanashiro from Universidad de Sonora, Dr. Francisco Molina Freaner from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Dr. Blanca R. Lopez and Dr. Alfonso Medel-Narváez from Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste S.C. Together, the team is building a foundational knowledge of the D. palmeri genome to enable the crop’s domestication. The research is developing resources and tools for genome-assisted breeding and other advanced breeding methods. The researchers are also investigating the plant’s physiology and genetic basis of critical breeding and domestication traits.“It is very clear that we face a challenging future in agriculture with limited water resources and corresponding salinity problems,” said Poland. “It is truly exciting to embark on some potentially trajectory-changing research with this project and notable to see FFAR and KAUST investing in this vision and the grand challenges of food security in the coming decades.”
Expanding our understanding of D. palmeri can enable breeders and growers to improve its nutritional content and expand its ability to grow in a variety of highly salinized environments. The researchers hope that unlocking the genomic and breeding potential of the crop can also serve as a basis for the domestication and at-scale production of other saltwater-loving plants.
