Soybeans with Deeper Roots to Fight Climate Change | San Antonio News

Scientists are engineering soybeans with deeper roots to fight climate change by pulling more CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it underground. Backed by an $18 million Bezos Earth Fund grant, researchers are testing these super-rooted plants in real-world fields to measure their resilience to drought, carbon sequestration potential, and scalability. By tweaking genes that control root growth and boosting suberin—a carbon-locking compound—these modified crops could store up to a metric ton of CO2 per acre annually. But getting them adopted by farmers remains a hurdle, as new ag tech often faces slow uptake due to market forces, poli...