Projects

We made a soil cake for the FAO Soil Cake Contest! Any guess what kind of soil it might be? And can you spot some kernza on top? (Really hoping we win some t-shirts 🤞) Update: Yes it’s a mollisol, thanks for the guesses!

We went to Kansas for the Land Institute’s early career workshop! We got to tour the Kanza Prairie and learn how disturbance (bison, fire) affects plant communities and meet to many people studying so many aspects of perennials- water and nutrients use, climate impacts, genetics, soil organic matter formation, supply chains, intercropping, disease resistance… 🌾🥳

Welcome to the UWyo STEM Carnival! We taught lots of kids about dirt and leaves😁

We did a alternative-grains-pancake taste test! Kernza got first, then emmer, spelt, and lastly whole wheat- though we might be biased 🤷‍♀️ Thanks to First Grains (another Western SARE-funded research project) for the Wyoming-grown emmer and spelt, and Perennial Pantry for the recipe

We tried to thresh and de-hull some Kernza from our backyard by hand, turns out it’s so hard!! Kudos to ancient humans who figured out better ways to do this 🤷‍♀️

Hannah went to The Land Institute to sample rhizosphere soil from different breeding lines of Kernza (and un-bred intermediate wheatgrass). As we breed for plants that put more resources into grain, they may put fewer resources into roots, and to feed all the microbes that live in and on those roots.

Hannah dug up the root balls (the densest part of the root mass, near the surface) of these three plants. Can you tell which plant is Kernza, wheat, and wild-type intermediate wheatgrass?

Before dawn, the tension in plant leaf water is as close as it can be to equilibrium with the water pressure in the soil, and can give a good baseline for measurements taken throughout the more stressful parts of the day.

This week, Hannah sampled the rhizosphere soil from wheat, Kernza, and unbred intermediate wheatgrass, to look for differences in their microbial communities. The RHIZOSPHERE is the zone right next to plant roots, and it can house 100x more microbes than the rest of the soil!

In spring 2022, Alex set up two eddy covariance towers at the Hellbaum farm to monitor the carbon and water cycles of different fields. As you can see, the wyoming wind can make this work a little difficult…