Crowdfunding Campaign Underway to Support Student Research on Sustainable Agriculture

A group of five people smiling holding crops The Fast Farming team, from left to right: junior Liam Farrell, Plant Biology Masters student Nikki Kapp, juniors Jaime Jarrin and Samanta Roa, and Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Charles Anderson. Credit: Yue Rui

A group of Penn State students led by Assistant Professor of Biology Charles Anderson has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support their new research project in sustainable agriculture, Fast Farming: Feeding a Hot, Dry World. The campaign is the first to launch under a new partnership between Penn State and USEED, a crowdfunding platform that partners with universities to enable researchers to invite friends, family members, colleagues, alumni, and the public to support projects that are important to them.

The Fast Farming research project uses a genetic screening technique called activation tagging to identify genes that improve a plant's ability to tolerate environmental stresses. These stresses, such as drought and extreme heat, are worsening as a result of climate change and already are threatening the ability of farmers around the world to grow enough food. In its first five days, the Fast Farming crowdfunding campaign has raised over $4,000, putting the students two thirds of the way toward the initial $6,000 fundraising milestone, but they have even bigger dreams. Raising $36,000 would enable the team to sustain an intensive research program for a full year, allowing them to test many different environmental conditions with an expanded set of plant varieties and giving them the chance to identify many more new stress-tolerance genes.

The four-week-old plants (Brachypodium) in the foreground were exposed to drought conditions, whereas those in the background were watered continuously. Screening many thousands of Brachypodium varieties under conditions like these will allow the Penn State Fast Farming research team led by Assistant Professor of Biology Charles Anderson, to rapidly identify genes that confer drought tolerance. Credit: Charles Anderson, Penn State

The team uses Brachypodium distachyon, a small, fast-growing grass species related to wheat and barley. They grow many thousands of Brachypodium plants in greenhouses and growth chambers to mimic soil and weather conditions faced by farmers around the world. They can harvest valuable data from one generation of plants in as little as one month. The research team also hopes to make direct contact with farmers and plant breeders around the world, learning about the specific challenges they face as a result of climate change and helping them to efficiently identify the best hardy, high-yielding crop varieties that will grow well under fluctuating climate conditions.

The students involved in the project include Nikki Kapp, a master's student in plant biology, and Penn State undergraduate students Liam Farrell, Jaime Jarrin, and Samantha Roa.

Anderson's group studies the dynamics of plant cell walls, with a focus on improving our ability to sustainably produce food, materials, and energy from plants. Before joining the Penn State Biology Department in 2011, he completed postdoctoral research at the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of California Berkeley, which focuses on the scientific, technical, and societal aspects of developing sustainable sources of bioenergy. He is currently a principal investigator in the Center for Lignocellulose Structure and Formation, an Energy Frontiers Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

For more information on this project, visit the Fast Farming crowdfunding campaign website.

For more information on Dr. Anderson's research, visit his laboratory website.