The Future of Food in Clues from the Past: 2023 YPS Grant Project Insight
Wheat is among the staple crops that feed the world. According to the United Nations, nearly 700 million metric tons of wheat are consumed each year, providing more than a fifth of the world’s calories and protein. But as climate change intensifies drought and extreme heat, the global wheat supply is increasingly at risk. A solution for the future of wheat stability could lie in clues from the past.
The YPS-funded project, Drought Resilience Mechanisms in Ancient Egyptian Wheats and Implications for Modern Crop Strategies looks back thousands of years at plant records to investigate what wheat varieties show promise in helping modern agriculture overcome pressing climate challenges.
Varieties of wheat examined by the research team.
During the Ptolemaic period in Egypt (305 to 30 BC), Greek rulers replaced traditionally grown barley and emmer wheat with durum wheat. Historians suspect that this shift may have worsened food shortages, contributing to social instability. To test this idea, the interdisciplinary research team combined evidence of wheat varieties from the past with modern experiments, growing different wheats in a laboratory setting to compare their drought tolerance.
“We drew on an archaeobotanical sample, something that had been excavated from an Egyptian tomb and had a published genome, and we found the closest modern cognate and we grew that,” said Kate Birney, Associate Professor of Art History, Classical Studies, and Archaeology at Wesleyan University.
“A lot of the genetic improvements are made with existing varieties that are well known and commonly grown, and there are benefits to that,” said Stephen Wood, Senior Scientist for Agriculture & Food Systems at The Nature Conservancy. “But by introducing an ancient variety, you can sometimes confer even greater drought resilience and climate resilience than when you’re tweaking existing varieties, which can only be tweaked so far.”
The team used an instrument that rapidly measures how much water is lost from plant leaves during photosynthesis. This allowed them to quickly identify differences in how the selected wheat varieties respond to water stress, with important implications for agriculture in drought-prone regions.
“We hoped that Planetary Solutions funding would help us generate rigorous scientific support to validate our initial hypothesis. We’ve completed an early stage where we can confirm significant differences in yield and in drought tolerance between the two grains that we tested,” explained Craig Brodersen, Professor of Plant Physiological Ecology. “The next step is to look for funding to do these experiments at scale and potentially working with growers.”
The data gathered is intended to support farmers in regions of the world facing extreme heat or drought to recognize or mitigate drought stress in their crops. The project also highlights how bringing together perspectives from different fields can increase the real-world impact of research.
“Being able to fund and support this kind of interdisciplinary research is a major asset to Yale. As a Yale alum, it’s exciting for me to come back and learn from Craig and the Yale School of the Environment faculty to marry these two areas of expertise,” said Kate. “This is work that shows how ancient texts and archaeology can address modern challenges, whether by identifying species that are robust in the face of climate change, or highlighting sustainable cultivation practices. This really inspires hope!”
“One of the real strengths of the YPS funding opportunities is the way that it can build new types of connection and collaboration,” said Stephen. “Craig is a plant physiologist, Kate is an archeologist interested in what crops they grew in the Roman and Egyptian empires, and I work on modern food systems and how they can adapt for climate change. There would never really be a setting where these three things could come together, and it gave a new lens to how we could think about the adaptation potential of these wheat growing regions and new insights for how to create strategies for the future.”
Undergraduate students also benefitted from the unique opportunities presented by this work.
“One of the students who is studying classics went on to work on a thesis related to ancient Mediterranean agriculture. What’s cool is to be able to see how getting some basic lab training sparked their interest in doing their own lab work,” said Kate.
Experiences like this also reflect the importance of collaborations that go beyond the classroom.
“Partnerships with universities are critical for The Nature Conservancy because they give us the influx of science and evidence that we need to achieve our mission,” said Stephen. “On the flip side, having that connection for students really prepares them to be competitive in the job market. When they walk out of Yale, they can say, ‘I know this methodology, and here’s an example of how I would do it,’ and it gives them a leg up.”
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