Kavli Affiliate: Abraham Stroock
| First 5 Authors: Vesna Bacheva, Imani Madison, Mathew Baldwin, Mark Beilstein, Douglas F. Call
| Summary:
Feeding the growing human population sustainably amidst climate change is one
of the most important challenges in the 21st century. Current practices often
lead to the overuse of agronomic inputs, such as synthetic fertilizers and
water, resulting in environmental contamination and diminishing returns on crop
productivity. The complexity of agricultural systems, involving
plant-environment interactions and human management, presents significant
scientific and technical challenges for developing sustainable practices.
Addressing these challenges necessitates transdisciplinary research, involving
intense collaboration among fields such as plant science, engineering, computer
science, and social sciences. Here, we present five case studies from two
research centers demonstrating successful transdisciplinary approaches toward
more sustainable water and fertilizer use. These case studies span multiple
scales. Starting from whole-plant signaling, we explore how reporter plants can
transform our understanding of plant communication and enable efficient
application of water and fertilizers. We then show how new fertilizer
technologies could increase the availability of phosphorus in the soil. To
accelerate advancements in breeding new cultivars, we discuss robotic
technologies for high-throughput plant screening in different environments at a
population scale. At the ecosystem scale, we investigate phosphorus recovery
from aquatic systems and methods to minimize phosphorus leaching. Finally, as
agricultural outputs affect all people, we show how to integrate stakeholder
perspectives and needs into the research. With these case studies, we hope to
encourage the scientific community to adopt transdisciplinary research and
promote cross-training among biologists, engineers, and social scientists to
drive discovery and innovation in advancing sustainable agricultural systems.
| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”Abraham Stroock”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=3