A microbial hitchhiker

The Green Revolution of 1950-1970 helped agriculture flourish around the world. Advances in technology enabled farmers to scale up their production, improving the way they watered and fertilized their crops.

The technology advancements - particularly in using chemical fertilizers - paved the way for taller plants, richer soils, and greater crop yields. All of these are known as "above-ground" traits.

But Harsh Bais, a professor of plant biology at the University of Delaware who was named an Innovation Ambassador earlier this year, said plants' "below-ground" traits, such as how nutrient-dense they are, have long been overlooked.

"As far as food security, we will have significant challenges by 2050 when the world's population doubles," Bais said. "We incentivize our farmers for crop yield; we don't incentivize them for growing nutrient-dense crops. Growing nutrient-dense plants will enable the population to be fed better and avoid any potential nutrient deficiencies."

The problem, Bais said, is that most staple crops, such as corn and soybeans, are not grown in a way that boosts their amount of nutrients.

"We have to care about nutrients because we eat plants for our food," Bais said. "At this juncture, the majority of our stable crops are mass-produced and not cultivated for elevated nutrient contents."

Nutrients help nourish the human body, keeping people healthy. People need nutrient-rich amino acids for their bodies to produce protein. In new research published in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology, Bais and a team of researchers from the University of Delaware, Stroud Water Research Center and the Rodale Institute investigated how a bacteria naturally found in the soil that is beneficial to human health can enhance the levels of the amino acid and antioxidant ergothioneine in spring wheat. The findings offer insight into improving the nutritional value of crops in the future. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.

The researchers grew spring wheat - one of the most widely consumed cereal crops - in a laboratory. After letting the seeds germinate and grow for seven days, they added a strain of bacteria called Streptomyces coelicolor M145 to the spring wheat roots.