Drs. Sean Asselin and Hongjie Zhang in a greenhouse at the Swift Current Research and Development Centre.--Submitted Photo
asmith@medicinehatnews.com
Researchers in Swift Current are seeking the key to how the diversity of the country’s native grasslands holds such economic and ecological value, and they may yet find it in the region’s DNA.
The project itself, known as Grassland Genomics for Greenhouse Gas Mitigation, or GG4GHG, really consists of roughly six to eight more focused areas of research being brought under one collaborative umbrella, said Sean Asselin, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
“For my part, I’m looking at native plants, and particularly their genetic resiliency,” said Asselin. “So we have populations that have been collected from across the Prairies. What we’re doing is we’re conducting some stress testing work in Swift Current, to take a look and see if they have adapted to drought.”
Asselin explained that in areas with lower genetic diversity, even within a single species, there is a higher risk of that plant population becoming susceptible to adverse conditions over time, such as drought or disease. Because of this, his research is focused on genetic variation.
Among his colleagues, they have various focuses, including fellow researcher Hongjie Zhang, who focuses on soil carbon, and co-lead Jonathan Bennett, who is looking into the world of soil micro-organisms as they pertain to native plants. Beneficial insects are being researched by several entomologists, and how they could potentially help reduce the need for pesticides.
The research is new, said Asselin, but they believe the end result may be a user-end app, intended to be used by landowners.
“All this information that we’re collecting is ultimately going to be developed into an application, either a web app or when you’re using your cellphone set, that producers can put in characteristics of their sites, and see the benefit of including additional species, what that is going to potentially do for their carbon, and what the potential yield benefits are.”
The intent of such an app is to prevent the conversion of native grasslands into annual crop fields, said Asselin, and using genomic tools, or tools which look at DNA, to collect the data necessary to help with that educational piece.
“We’re using genomics to characterize the microorganisms in the soil, and then we’re using genetic tools to identify some of the insects,” said Asselin. “Some of these insects we can catch and identify easily. But a lot of times, a species will use a flower, and then they’ll leave, we have no real way of capturing it.”
So what Asselin’s entomologist colleagues are doing is taking plant parts from the field and collecting any remnant DNA that the insect may have left behind to figure out how these plants are actually being used by insects.
Native grasslands, and to some extent tamed pasture, are vital for capturing carbon from the atmosphere and fixing it into the soil; as much as 34% of terrestrial carbon is stored in grassland areas.
“We know in terms of soil carbon and reducing the impact of greenhouse gases, we know that preventing the conversion of grasslands is the No. 1 thing that Canada can do to reduce its CO2 emissions,” said Asselin. “But one of the challenges that we see in these natural rangelands systems, is this economic incentive to move towards annual cropping systems.”
Because of this, one of the major goals of the researchers is to highlight the potential economic benefits of natural rangeland in terms of cattle grazing practices, as well as benefits to neighbouring cropland.
“We want to show the potential economic value in the full sense for decision making,” said Asselin. “So that it’s not, you know, a quick decision. It’s something that we thought about, not that people don’t think about these things, but it’s just to provide more of the economic support to preserving grasslands.”
So far, the team has been thrilled to see interest and fresh perspectives from various groups, and looks forward to putting together their first growing season’s worth of data in the fall.
