Scientists at the Salk Institute are moving a decade of root research from the lab into real farm fields. With an $18 million grant from the Bezos Earth Fund, the new ROOTS project will test whether soybean varieties with deeper, cork-like roots can store more carbon in soil while also handling drought and disease. The three-year effort builds on earlier work that identified 347 gene candidates linked to carbon-storing root traits. The project will use AI tools like RootGPT to speed up trait selection, then validate results in Midwest field trials and an ongoing Illinois study. Salk models suggest the enhanced roots could remove an extra one to two metric tons of CO2 per hectare per year, but the field data will determine whether that holds up. If it does, the same traits could later be applied to maize, rice, and wheat, giving agriculture a practical way to contribute to carbon removal.
