Location: Soil Management and Sugarbeet Research
Project Number: 3012-12210-001-014-N
Project Type: Non-Funded Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Sep 1, 2022
End Date: Aug 31, 2027
Objective:
Together positively impact agricultural, genetic, and natural resources under ever changing climatic and land use pressures in Colorado and the Central Great Plains by:
1. Integrating the management of livestock, crop, rangeland, and forest source-water systems to ensure the region’s natural and human resources will continue to support a thriving economy and thriving ecosystem.
2. Developing precision conservation strategies that improve the quality of life and quality of the environment for rural and urban neighbors
3. Troubleshooting plant and animal genebanking methods to solve the most critical problems of genetic resource collections: keep germplasm alive, healthy, and representative of the source population; describe collection composition; and ensure stored germplasm meets the needs of diverse users.
This includes: (1) adaptation and improvement of dryland and irrigated cropping systems for the Central Great Plains region to better face extreme variation of weather and climate; (2) spatial modeling of agricultural watersheds, including water and nutrient management and targeted conservation effects at field to watershed scales; (3) multidisciplinary approaches to enhance sugarbeet germplasm; (4) management practices for long-term productivity of Central Great Plains agriculture; (5) management strategies to sustain irrigated agriculture with limited water supplies; (6) improved management to balance production and conservation in Great Plains rangelands; (7) national animal germplasm research; (8) plant and microbial genetic resources preservation and quality assessment; (9) innovations that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of managing and preserving ex-situ plant germplasm collections; and (10) multidisciplinary approaches to enhance wildfire and climate-resilient source-water forest ecosystems.
Approach:
(a) To develop long-term sustainable soil and crop management practices for the Central Great Plains Region (CGPR) and identify technologies that maximize the use of the region's soil and water resources with minimal negative environmental impact.
(b) Troubleshoot plant genebanking methods to solve the most critical problems of genetic resource collections: keep germplasm alive, healthy and representative of the source population; describe collection composition; and ensure stored germplasm meets the needs of diverse users.
(c) The changing needs in U.S. agriculture place new demands on farmers and plant breeders for new improved varieties which require access to a wide range of well characterized plant diversity. An increasing global population will require more efficient food production, and a changing climate requires crop varieties adapted to stresses. Limited, and sometimes compromised, water resources are having greater impacts on crop yields.
This includes: (I) adaptation of dryland cropping systems for the Central Great Plains region to extreme variation of weather and climate; (2) spatial modeling of agricultural watersheds, including water and nutrient management and targeted conservation effects at field to watershed scales; (3) multidisciplinary approaches to enhanced sugarbeet germplasm; (4) management practices for long-term productivity of Great Plains Agriculture; (5) management strategies to sustain irrigated agriculture with limited water supplies; (6) improved management to balance production and conservation in Great Plains rangelands; (7) national animal germplasm research; (8) plant and microbial genetic resources preservation and quality assessment; and (9) innovations that improve the efficiency and effectiveness of managing and preserving ex-situ plant germplasm collections.
