Botanical foundations for perennial agriculture: Evolution and ecology of perennial herbaceous plants

The Perennial Agriculture Project - Global Inventory (PAPGI) is a collaborative project between Saint Louis University (St. Louis, MO), the Missouri Botanical Garden (St. Louis, MO), and The Land Institute and Malone Family Land Preservation Foundation (Salina, KS). PAPGI is a global effort to identify wild perennial, herbaceous species as candidates for breeding perennial grain crops. Eventually, perennial grain species will be used to develop an agriculture that mimics sustainable natural ecosystems to address challenges associated with food security, land degradation, and climate change. Compared to annual species, herbaceous perennials offer deeper rooting systems, reduced soil erosion, more complete utilization of precipitation and nutrients, and greater accumulation of soil carbon; however, few have been domesticated for human food. PAPGI aims to develop a checklist of all perennial, herbaceous members of the Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae, to collect data on agronomic, ethnobotanical, and toxicological traits relevant to pre-breeding efforts. PAPGI also aims to develop long-term experiments designed to advance understanding of evolutionary processes in perennial, herbaceous plants. The checklist portion of PAPGI is organized as a special project within Tropicos, a database hosted by The Missouri Botanical Garden. Using existing biodiversity databases, we identified 6,670 perennial herbaceous/shrubby and perennial/annual herbaceous species in Fabaceae, 7,281 species in Poaceae, and 1,774 species in the Tribe Heliantheae (Asteraceae). Currently, we are amassing trait data for wild perennial, herbaceous species within the three families. The Perennial Agriculture Project - Global Inventory - (PAPGI) represents a widening of the traditional focus of crop genetic resource programs. In addition to crop wild relatives in these families (e.g., perennial Glycine, Helianthus, Zea), we contend that previously undomesticated, wild plant species, starting with these three families, might be good candidates for pre-breeding and are an important component of plant genetic resources. PAPGI represents a novel, searchable list with relevant botanical and agricultural data for breeding and domestication of perennial herbaceous grain crops, ensuring a significant number of candidates to perennial crop breeding and alternative agricultural systems.