Project Report
Project Lead/Researchers:
Sotirios Archontoulis, professor, Agronomy
The Leopold Center provided matching funds for a large, multi-year regional project to measure the impacts of modern corn breeding on several key aspects of environmental sustainability, including nitrogen and water use efficiencies and carbon gains and losses, as well as productivity. The research is based on more than 100 field experiment across the U.S. Corn Belt studying 80 corn hybrids released since the 1980s. A modeling component will develop future trajectories for the region.
With another year of analysis yet to finish, preliminary results suggest that crop improvement (breeding + agronomic management) has had positive impacts on sustainability by means of increasing water use efficiency, nitrogen use efficiency and adding more carbon into the soil over the last 40-years. The project’s primary supporters are the Foundation for Food and Agricultural Research and Bayer Crop Science.