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With Genetic Advances, New Promise For Sunflowers’ Profitable Future

Amy Mayer/IPR
Iowa State University plant breeder Jessica Barb grows sunflowers on research plots near the Ames campus. Her work explores pigments and the plant’s self-pollination process. ";

Plant breeder Jessica Barb is on a mission to improve how sunflowers self-pollinate, a trait that’ll be increasingly important to farmers as wild bee populations diminish. Her research tool of choice: a paper towel.

In a field outside of Ames, Iowa, she swipes the paper towel across the head of a bright yellow-and-red sunflower—bred to feed Iowa State University fans’ frenzy for all things in the school’s colors—and transfers the pollen on the paper towel to a different flower. Researchers recently unlocked the genetic code of the entire plant, which means Barb will more quickly be able to identify the specific genes that play a role in self-pollination.

Credit Amy Mayer/IPR
Using a paper towel to collect pollen, Jessica Barb will manually pollinate a different sunflower. She says the genome map will help her zero in on the genetics that control self-pollination.

Sunflowers are a global commodity crop with a growing demand, though they’re currently a minor player on the United States’ agricultural scene. The genome-mapping is likely to create better hybrid seeds, but there’s no reason to expect the picturesque crop, despite its profit potential, will quickly overtake the Corn Belt.

A genome map, like a traditional map, offers landmarks and other features to help guide researchers to find what they’re looking for. And knowing where certain sunflower qualities reside will help combat diseases, such as the Phomopsis stem canker fungus that wiped out nearly 40 percent of the crop in 2010.

“We want to know what genes get expressed when the pathogen infects the sunflower plant and what genes can be expressed as resistance when the pathogen infects,” South Dakota State University professor and plant pathologist Febina Mathew says.

Mathew says it usually takes 15 years for discoveries like hers to reach the commercial seeds that farmers plant. But with the new genome map, she says, “that cuts back that 15 years to maybe 10 years, probably. So we would be saving time there.”

That might still sound like a long time, but farmers don’t switch up their crops quickly because they need to feel confident they won’t lose money on something new.

Credit Amy Mayer/IPR
These sunflowers grow on research fields in Ames, Iowa, a state with almost no commodity sunflower production. But in states from North Dakota south to Texas, sunflowers are common in the row-crop rotation.

Sunflowers are mostly grown in hot, dry states from North Dakota to Texas, as it doesn’t take much moisture to grow the crop. About 80 percent of the sunflowers harvest in the U.S. gets crushed into vegetable oil, with the other 20 percent for the baseball-snack standard. Sunflower seeds are also used in baked goods and trail mix, what the industry calls “confectionary.”

“What I think farmers are doing is they're looking for alternatives to grow different crops,” John Sandbakken, executive director of the National Sunflower Association, says.“And they're also looking for profitable crops and sunflower has been a very profitable crop over the years and it's something that producers have looked at just to give them some diversity.”

Sandbakken says sunflowers generally are cheaper to grow than some other crops, meaning farmers might squeak out a profit in years when they lose money on other things. Diversifying a crop lineup improves soil health. Sunflowers offer other conservation benefits, too.

They have very long roots, meaning they can access deep water in dry conditions that would kill other crops. That also helps sunflowers access an important nutrient that may sink into the soil after being applied to previous crops.

“We found in cases where we've grown sunflower after a sustained period of corn-soybean rotation or corn-soybean-wheat rotation that it finds nitrogen that other crops have left behind,” according to Brent Hulke, a scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in Fargo, North Dakota.

In the right fields, sunflowers can be a money-maker that helps the environment. That seems too good to be true, and is for many farmers in the non-traditional sunflower-growing areas, because it’s not cheap to drive the seeds to a far-flung processing plant.

But some farmers may be able find the golden ticket, as Congress is preparing to tackle the 2018 farm bill and there’s fresh attention being put on oilseed crops, which include sunflowers, and conservation programs.

Credit Amy Mayer/IPR
Plant breeders can select for desire traits, which aren’t always visible in the flower, though ISU’s Jessica Barb has worked to get the school’s cardinal and gold colors to come out.

Follow Amy on Twitter: @AgAmyInAmes

Amy Mayer is a reporter based in Ames