9 minute read
A Perennial Partnership
MTSU Professor Song Cue teams up with a Kansas-based sustainable agriculture agency to prove less tilling tastes great
Article by Drew Ruble
Photos by J. Intintoli
Tennessee’s motto is “Agriculture and Commerce.” Agriculture has always been Tennessee’s No. 1 industry and synonymous with its brand.
Food grown in the Volunteer State is planted in carbonrich topsoil. But topsoil is disappearing at a terrifying rate across the United States. According to a study by Cornell University, almost 2 billion tons of farmland are lost to soil erosion every year. From a food supply standpoint, it’s nothing short of a crisis.
Tennessee farmers boast a proud history of employing conservation methods to reduce the erosion of topsoil across the state. That’s one of many reasons the nonprofit Land Institute, based in Salina, Kansas, has its eye on Tennessee. Through the selective breeding of seeds and the development of perennial grain crops that don’t need replanting annually, the Land Institute is a national leader in ecologically sensitive agriculture.
Now, as a result of a recent partnership between the institute and MTSU Agriculture professor and researcher Song Cui, perennial plants like grain, sorghum, and sunflowers are being tested in Tennessee soil.
It’s creating new opportunities for Tennessee farmers.
A WILLING PARTNER
Perennial grains like those the Land Institute pioneered grow long roots that extend deep into the ground. By doing so, they build healthy soil, better absorb water, protect soil from erosion, retain nutrients, foster biodiversity, and remove carbon dioxide from the air.
The Land Institute’s signature product to date is Kernza, a perennial grain it developed, which flourishes in the Midwestern U.S.Kernza produces a grain yield for about three years—a significant improvement over annual crops requiring tilling each year.
Kernza produces a grain yield for about three years—a significant improvement over annual crops requiring tilling each year.
Major food manufacturers like General Mills and supermarket chains such as Whole Foods are already deep in the Kernza business. Consumers nationwide can easily find Kernza products, including beer, on grocery store shelves.
That commercial success is crucial. Because it’s not enough that a product is supported by consumers with an ecologically friendly mindset. Pragmatically speaking, to truly dent the market and bring about change, it also has to taste good, and farmers have to be able to make money growing it.
Ebony Murrell, crop protection ecologist at the Land Institute, said her organization is very proud of Kernza’s market success. It remains the institute’s most successful grain to date.
Murrell and her colleagues at Land Institute are working on other perennial grains, including perennial sorghum, a hybrid between annual sorghum and Johnson grass, which is a weed, and sillflower, a prairie grass that is a cousin to the annual sunflower.
The question for the institute now is: Can Kernza (and other perennial crops) viably grow in other parts of the country and world?Kernza produces a grain yield for about three years—a significant improvement over annual crops requiring tilling each year.
To that end, Land Institute has launched a movement to scale perennial agriculture, building connections to ensure that perennial grains will be developed on every continent except Antarctica.
In doing so, it supports more than 200 researchers in more than 30 countries.
DIGGING INTO THE DETAILS
Enter Cui, who became a partner to investigate some of the institute’s lines in plant breeding in Tennessee last year.
“They might be shooting for higher yield, better adaptivity, adaptivity to a new environment, a lot of things,” Cui said of the institute’s interest in MTSU and farming in Tennessee. “So, that’s the way I started a conversation with them. They told me what they need, and I offered whatever we can do here. They have varieties of breeding lines that no one has ever grown in the Southeastern United States. Now we are!”
Kernza, sorghum, and sillflower are the three crops currently associated with the MTSU grant. (Land Institute is testing wheat and lentil products elsewhere.)
KERNZA PRODUCES A GRAIN YIELD FOR ABOUT THREE YEARS—A SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENT OVER ANNUAL CROPS REQUIRING TILLING EACH YEAR.
Murrell said the institute is thrilled to be partnering with Cui and MTSU and to spread perennial agriculture to the South.
“We are excited about bringing in a lot of these novel cover crops and cropping rotations and intercropping to institutions across the South and Southeastern U.S. that historically don’t get nearly as much love or as much attention for their sustainable agriculture practices,” Murrell said.
“And I’m delighted that Song is really making a strong effort to do this.”
Cui most recently planted Kernza in November 2024. Their roots are huge and very deep—at least 3 or 4 feet.
Cui also planted about 600 perennial sunflowers, as well as perennial sorghum, last summer. In addition to his research, all crops are used for teaching purposes.
“You’re looking about almost zero management,” Cui said. “It’s one time planting and getting them established, maybe some weeding at the very beginning, but then they kind of take care of themselves.”
That’s a far cry from traditional agricultural methods, which Cui describes as an ecologist’s nightmare. Each time a farmer tills the soil, about 40% of the carbon in it is emitted out into the air. Tilling also requires the use of fossil fuels to power it.
THE INSTITUTE IS THRILLED TO BE PARTNERING WITH CUI AND MTSU AND TO SPREAD PERENNIAL AGRICULTURE TO THE SOUTH.
“Then, at the end of the year, you’re going to have to harvest, and you’re going to have to do something about the field again,” Cui said. “You either have to plant a different cover crop, or you just leave it, releasing all the carbon. Then, the next year, the cycle begins again.”
By comparison, with a perennial system in place, once established well, “you don't have to do anything for years,” Cui said. That’s because the root depths on the perennial grains are about 10 to 20 times deeper than typical annual crops. “And those roots are where the carbon goes. That's the other benefit.”
MAKING THE CASE
Cui’s early success with perennial plants is creating buzz in the Tennessee farm community.
“Tennessee farmers are interested in growing these,” he said. “The interest out there is just huge. As soon as I start talking about perennial sunflowers, people start talking to me and calling me. They’ll say, ‘Hey, can I have some seeds? I want to grow it.’
“We must try to achieve a better future, a more sustainable farming future, for the nation. That’s kind of the bigger picture of all the projects we’ve been working on.”
According to Cui, the Land Institute’s interest in MTSU extends beyond his specific project.
THE ROOT DEPTHS ON THE PERENNIAL GRAINS ARE ABOUT 10 TO 20 TIMES DEEPER THAN TYPICAL ANNUAL CROPS.
Other MTSU agriculture programs the institute has pegged for potential future research endeavors include the Fermentation Science program and the Tennessee Center for Botanical Medicine Research.
“They value us as an institution,” Cui said, “and we all work together very closely. That’s the part they really love.
“Other than just growing perennial crops, they like the fact that we can explore the value of it. Is there a better use of it than solely for producing greens for human consumption? Maybe there are medicinal properties. Maybe there is value in the oils. Can you make good wines or sake out of it? Actually, we have preliminary data already supported that says, ‘Yes, you can! You can do all sort of things with it!’”
The School of Agriculture’s facilities include several farms, a dairy, four greenhouses, a fermentation lab, and the Horse Science Center. Students in the department apply what they learn in a variety of real-life settings.
MTSU Agriculture faculty teach that feeding the world in a sustainable way is key to the future, and its students participate in research and experiential learning that progress toward that goal.
The new partnership on perennial crop production is just the next step.
A Worldwide Effort
A group of 153 Nobel and World Food Prize laureates wrote a letter in 2025 calling for significant political and financial support for “moonshot” initiatives to meet the food needs of a growing planet and support the longterm health of the planet.
The letter’s authors noted the need for concentrated investments in agricultural research and development to address variable and unpredictable weather, declining food yields, soil and land degradation, natural resource scarcity, and biodiversity loss.
To rectify these agricultural and environmental concerns, the authors reference the urgency for several moonshot initiatives, including a perennial agriculture transformation and an emphasis on new crop development for nitrogen fixation and diverse cropping systems at the global scale.
“We are advocating for transformational efforts across the food value chain, from inputs to production to the post-harvest phase. Building on recent advancements in biology and genetics, moonshot initiatives that could be considered include: enhancement of photosynthesis in crops such as wheat and rice, biological nitrogen fixation of major cereals, transformation of annual to perennial crops, development of new and overlooked crops, innovations in diverse cropping systems, enhancement of fruits and vegetables to improve storage and shelf life and to increase food safety, and the creation of nutrientrich food from microorganisms and fungi,” the letter read.
The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, a science-based research organization working to develop an alternative to current destructive agricultural practices, is dedicated to advancing perennial grain crops and polyculture farming solutions. The institute and MTSU are currently working together on a series of grants related to perennial crops.
