Researchers Say New Grain Type Could Be Climate-Resilient

Channel millet growing in the UQ greenhouse. University of Queensland

Wild millet could feed the world as climate change impacts established grain crops, according to a University of Queensland (UQ) research project on Oct. 26.

Queensland Alliance of Agriculture Ph.D. candidate Rahul Chandora analysed the genome of channel millet to help evaluate its past use and determine its future potential.

Mr. Chandora found the climate-resilient grain could help diversify traditional diets because it was also highly nutritious, adaptive, and gluten-free.

Channel millet, cultivated on all continents, particularly India and Africa, grows in the nation’s border region between Queensland, the Northern Territory, South Australia, and New South Wales.

Mr. Chandora said the crop may once have been an essential food for central Australia’s Mithaka people.

“We want to see it become mainstream,” he said.

Challengingly, domesticated millet yields are lower than other cereals, and lodging, seed shattering, and seed size affect production.

“If we can learn more about channel millet’s genetics, we can identify favourable traits and use gene editing technology to domesticate it rapidly,” he said.

UQ Ph.D. candidate Rahul Chandora. Courtesy of the University of Queensland

“We hope then to expand the gene pool of farmed millet and eventually shift our reliance from cereals like rice, wheat, and maise.”

Mr. Chandora added, “Genetic resources like this could erode very quickly due to climate change, and without a concerted effort, we won’t have access to them in the future.”

“We need to find new crops to meet the nutritional needs of the world’s rapidly growing population, and that makes this vital and interesting work,” he said.

Climate-Proofing The World: Professor

UQ Professor Robert Henry told 2GB radio the university actively searched for new crops to adapt agricultural practices to the impacts of climate change.

Mr. Henry said the wild millet, a relative of Asia’s domesticated millet, could become a major food source worldwide, helping to combat the possibility of crops becoming unsuitable in future.

“We need to be aware of alternatives from harsher environments that reflect what we’re going to face and be ready to bring them into production,” he said.

He added researchers were rapidly working at the laboratory level to understand where the crop is precisely found.

However, the crop grows after rain, so much of the researcher’s work relies on seasonal conditions.

“We have to find this plant growing in response to a rainfall event, which can be a long time to wait.”

Millet a Focus of the UN to Solve Global Food Needs

It comes after the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) called for efforts to increase millet cultivation amidst global challenges in feeding an ever-growing population.

Still, resilient cereals provide affordable and nutritious nourishment and help guarantee food security in culturally relevant areas.

FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu said “ancestral” millets empowered could “achieve sustainable development, eliminate hunger, adapt to climate change, promote biodiversity, and transform agri-food systems.

“Greater millet production can support smallholder farmers’ livelihoods and provide decent jobs for women and youth,” he said.

“The revenue created can boost economic growth. With the possibility of a healthy cereal alternative with millet, the risks associated with production shocks can be mitigated.”

The United Nations subsequently declared 2023 the International Year of Millets with the hashtag #IYM2023 to galvanise farmers’, youth, government and policymaker’s interests.

Fears It Won’t Feed the World

However, the Centre for Plant Success (CPS) said although plant breeders developed rice, corn, and wheat crops through genome analysis over the last 20 years, productivity only increased by 1 percent a year on average—not enough to feed the world’s growing population.

CPS said, “Even without factoring in the projected changes in climate, including increasingly extreme weather events, the genetic gain needs to double, and to achieve this, we need a step change in plant breeding.”

Further, it could take years for breeders to manipulate one gene at a time and wait to observe the results.

About seven times out of eight, the plant fails to exhibit the desired trait, which CPS called a game of chance “where the odds are stacked against you.”

UQ Director Professor Christine Beveridge said tapping the genetics of other cultivated and wild plants could help achieve the “problematic goal” of doubling the genetic gain rate from one percent a year to two percent.

Ms. Beveridge said, “That’s why we have to bring together all we know across different plant science disciplines and to see plants as interconnected systems at the genetic, physiological, and crop levels.”

“It will be interesting—not only a scientific challenge but also a paradigm shift in how plant science is done.”