Five Farming Technologies Tackle Climate-Change Threats

By Nidhi Subbaraman June 4, 2023 10:32 am ET

Innovative ideas and devices are on the rise as heavier rainfall, harsher winters and disease-causing pests pose risks for agriculture

Plants growing in Freight Farms shipping containers are lighted with LEDs. FREIGHT FARMS

Agriculture faces some daunting challenges from a changing climate in coming years, scientists project. Heavy rainfall is expected to become more frequent, with resulting erosion of soil decreasing available nutrients. Growing conditions are forecast to change regionally—with some places seeing a potentially longer growing season, but others seeing drier, colder ones. Disease-causing pests and insects are expected to expand their range.

Growers soon could turn to new technological solutions to help cope. Here are a few of the latest. Self-Planting Seeds

Wildfires have become bigger and more frequent as the climate has warmed, sometimes leaving hard-to-reach mountainsides razed of vegetation. As a possible solution for bringing slopes back to life, scientists envision tree seeds dropped by drone.

After the seed carrier drills into the soil, the seed germinates and a plant emerges. PHOTO: MORPHING MATTER LAB/CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

Lining Yao, a mechanical engineer and materials designer at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a team of scientists have come up with a surprisingly low-tech device to help make sure that seeds dropped by drone germinate into saplings.

These seed carriers with curved tails and a tightly coiled stem are made of paper-thin sheets of wood and attached to a seedpod. When rainwater touches the tails, the material swells, propping up the seed carrier with its point facing into the soil. Seeds with tails had at least 80% success rate burying in lab tests, Yao and her colleagues showed in a study published in February in the journal Nature.

The researchers tested seeds of different sizes, including those of the whitebark pine, a high-altitude conifer that grows in regions of Western U.S. where wildfires are expected to increase. The team has had conversations with groups interested in aerial seeding, and is looking for partners for mass-manufacture and pilot tests.

“The bottleneck is to really scale up the manufacturing side of things,” Yao says. (continue to The Wall Street Journal for the full article)