St. Louis, MO (September 28, 2022) – Nadia Shakoor, PhD, principal investigator and senior research scientist at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is part of the nation-wide team that will work to quantify the climate impact potential of sorghum as part of a five-year, up to $65 million project lead by National Sorghum Producers. Funding for the project was provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture through its new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities.
Sorghum is an incredible plant that holds great promise as a carbon-sequestering crop. Sorghum’s inherent traits such as drought tolerance, make it an ideal crop to positively contribute to both food security resiliency and the mitigation of impacts due to a changing climate.
Shakoor has significant expertise in sorghum genetics and has developed high-tech sensors to monitor plants’ environments and growth in real-time. Additionally, she serves as a principal investigator for the Sorghum Harnessing Plants Initiative (HPI), a collaboration between the Danforth Center and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
“Sorghum inherently boasts climate-smart attributes and a tremendous opportunity exists to implement further climate-smart production practices and activities on working lands to achieve substantial carbon capture, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and contribute to other associated environmental benefits,” said Shakoor. READ MORE