Climate-Resilient Beer
Saving beer from climate change through better hops
To make an impact join the conversation or vote for this project!
The Problem
We know warming nights have negative effects on plants. And we know nights are warming, even faster than days, over crop-growing areas. However, we know very little about the consequences of these changes in plants.
Their Approach
Dr. Doherty and team are interested in developing hops as a model to understand how warming nights affect the aspects of plants we care about - taste and flavor. These traits come from the metabolites the plant produces. Hops is a great model because it has been bred for over a thousand years for its metabolites. The basic findings here will be relevant to other plants, but the research in hops also provides a way to connect with people about the impacts of climate change.Â
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While climate change is generally increasing the temperatures over crop-growing areas, nights are warming faster than days. To evaluate this they will grow two hop varieties plants in warmer days, warmer nights, or a combined warm day and night. Each treatment will be only 1-2 degrees C above ambient, so a very mild warming. They will compare the effects of each temperature treatment to the metabolites produced by the hop, with special emphasis on the well-known flavor compounds.
The Experts
Colleen Doherty is an expert in plant stress responses and understanding how changing climates impact plants.
If this project moves forward, she would plan to add students who are very interested in working on it.
Key Milestones
Regular
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Platinum
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Standard
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Behind the Bench
Get to know the researcher behind this project.
Why should someone care about the subject of your research?
If you like to drink beer (or enjoy the flavor of any food), our research examines how changing climate patterns affect flavor. We focus on hops where flavor is an important component, and the flavor of the hops significantly affects the flavor of the final beer product.
What is your research specialty?
My research focus is on how plants adapt to the environment. Our unique focus is the role of time in these adaptations. Â We are experts in computational and data analysis approaches in plant science.
How would supporting this project help your research?
We aren't just studying hops, our research is focused on understanding the effects of climate change on plants and working to identify mechanisms to help plants adapt. Â Supporting this research would let us develop a platform for climate change. We hypothesize that if we see any changes that will affect beer, this might be a good way to communicate the impacts of climate change. Â It is a good project for opening the door to discussions about climate change and the ongoing science to help us adapt.
If you could have an unlimited budget for 10 years. What’s the craziest research idea you’d follow?
Half of my lab works on using plants to recover rare earth elements to facilitate the transition to green energy. If I had unlimited funding, I'd devote all of my efforts to that because critical metals are, in my opinion, the largest hurdle to a clean energy grid. However, if climate change were not an issue and I could just study anything for fun, I'm super interested in parasitic plants (mistletoe, dodder) and also native plants of the Eastern US (pokeweed, holly) I think their biochemistry is amazing.