the project, called fast farming: feeding a hot, dry world, uses a genetic screening technique known as activation tagging to identify genes that improve a plant’s ability to tolerate environmental stresses. these stresses, such as drought and extreme heat, are worsening as a result of climate change and already are threatening the ability of farmers around the world to grow enough food.

the team has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support the project. it’s the first to launch under a new partnership between penn state and useed, a crowdfunding platform that partners with universities to support research projects.

the team is aiming to sustain an intensive research program for a full year, allowing them to test many different environmental conditions with an expanded set of plant varieties and giving them the chance to identify many more new stress-tolerance genes.

the team uses brachypodium distachyon, a small, fast-growing grass species related to wheat and barley. they grow many thousands of brachypodium plants in greenhouses and growth chambers to mimic soil and weather conditions faced by farmers around the world. they can harvest valuable data from one generation of plants in as little as one month. the research team also hopes to make direct contact with farmers and plant breeders around the world, learning about the specific challenges they face as a result of climate change and helping them to efficiently identify the best hardy, high-yielding crop varieties that will grow well under fluctuating climate conditions.

the students involved in the project include nikki kapp, a master’s degree student in plant biology, and penn state undergraduate students liam farrell, jaime jarrin and samantha roa.

anderson’s group studies the dynamics of plant cell walls, with a focus on improving our ability to sustainably produce food, materials and energy from plants. before joining the penn state biology department in 2011, he completed postdoctoral research at the energy biosciences institute at the university of california berkeley, which focuses on the scientific, technical and societal aspects of developing sustainable sources of bioenergy. he is currently a principal investigator in the center for lignocellulose structure and formation, an energy frontiers research center funded by the u.s. department of energy.

for more information on anderson’s research, visit his laboratory website.

researchers at texas a&m, missouri university of science and technology and the university of toronto have collaborated on another project that is also focused on learning from nature. the team is exploring how to capture the function of a natural system and use this to generate new design ideas. they have discovered that natural systems may be modeled functionally as if they were engineered systems. researchers can therefore design engineered systems by adapting solutions from natural systems. for example, they have studied the maneuverability of a housefly and captured the function and energy use of its wings, which can then be applied to improving the design of a micro-vehicle with flapping wings. however, in applying biologically-based design, it is critical to understand energy sources and flows.

by looking to nature for inspiration, engineers and designers can draw upon a multitude of design elements to solve design problems. both teams are discovering the underlying principles behind designs in nature and applying them to engineered designs with the goal of creating more environmentally friendly and energy efficient systems.

at the university of california-irvine, arthur weis is studying how a 5-year california drought caused genetic changes in field mustard, a weedy plant that is common throughout the united states. weis collected seeds from wild plants before and after the drought, then raised them under identical conditions to observe differences between the two samples. even when provided with sufficient amounts of water, plants grown from post-drought seeds bloomed sooner. during the drought, natural selection favored this particular trait because it allowed the plants to seed successfully before conditions became fatally dry. building on this study, weis is organizing an nsf-funded workshop to stimulate a concerted scientific effort to collect and preserve seeds across north america. called project baseline, this undertaking will provide scientists with an important resource for studying future climate change–induced evolutionary events.

on a global scale, raymond huey of the university of washington and george gilchrist of the college of william and mary have found genetic changes in fruit flies that correspond to temperature increases. in their study, they examined a certain type of genetic change known as a chromosomal inversion. more than 40 years ago, scientists documented these genetic rearrangements in wild populations of the fruit fly species drosophila subobscura and noted that the frequency of the inversions correlated with the flies’ latitude. although the exact purpose of the inversion is unknown, it appears to protect the flies against warm temperatures. huey and gilchrist used the past data and added information on present-day fruit flies on three continents. their analysis shows genetic differences between contemporary fruit flies and 1981 populations: flies at higher latitudes have more of the low-latitude chromosomal inversions. in other words, these flies have undergone genetic adaptation to warmer temperatures.