A Penn State plant scientist, Carolyn Lowry will be leading a team that will study how changes in temperature associated with climate change affect the establishment, persistence and performance of perennial forage crops and their associated weedy plant communities in the U.S. Northeast after he received a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Lowry, who is an assistant professor of plant science in the College of Agricultural Sciences, is expected to use the competitive four-year award from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to fund research that will determine the degree to which forage-management practices — such as variety selection and harvest frequency — may reduce or worsen these effects.
Lowry said that she and her team will be focusing on how farmers can manage climate change, specifically how they can manage forage stands to take advantage of warming winters, but also ensure plants survive in response to increasing winter weather variability.
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“One of the things that we’re seeing is repeated warm spells in winter followed by frigid periods — and that can stress out overwintering plants like alfalfa,” she said.
She explained that perennial forage crops that are cold-sensitive are especially vulnerable to winter weather variability and may experience greater incidences of winterkill because of decreased snow cover and warm spells followed by hard frosts in early spring, she explained.
She noted that poor winter survival is one of the leading impediments to reliable alfalfa stand establishment, adding that winter injury can decrease yields and, when severe, can necessitate replanting.
“The management practices that will allow farmers to realize greater yields in response to warming winter temperatures — such as increasing the number of harvests per year and switching to less dormant alfalfa varieties — also are likely to leave alfalfa plants more prone to winter injury,” she said.
Lowry further stated that the importance of forage crops to agriculture in the Northeast cannot be overstated, adding that with an economic value of greater than $800 million annually, forages are the backbone of the region’s livestock industries, the largest of which is dairy.
“Research aimed at evaluating how warmer and more variable weather affects the productivity and stability of perennial forage crop systems is essential to determining optimal forage-management strategies for adapting to the changing climate,” she said.
The research is expected to have three major objectives: evaluate the effect that forage management — planting different varieties varying in fall dormancy and forage-harvest frequency — has on alfalfa’s winter injury and survival, as well as forage yield, weed suppression and community composition in response to climate manipulations; characterize the effect of climate manipulations on weed seed bank dynamics and emergence timing, and quantify the extent to which environmental variables within climate manipulations and forage-management treatments predict forage and weed responses.
Story was adapted from Penn State.
