Michigan-Based Team To Resuscitate Shipwrecked Rye Seeds

KATHLEEN DAVIS: This is Science Friday. I’m SciFri producer Kathleen Davis. Every holiday season, I have one thing on my mind, and that is food. So in celebration, we’ve got a full hour of food science coming right up. We’ll debunk some nutrition myths, dig into some potato science, and learn how to make plant-based meat meatier.

But first on the menu, a story of shipwrecked rye. In 1878, a wooden schooner named the James R. Bentley set sail from Chicago to Buffalo, New York, carrying a large shipment of rye. But strong winds and rough waters damaged the ship, and it sank to the bottom of Lake Huron. The crew was saved, but the rye went down with the ship.

Now almost 150 years later, a Michigan-based team dove to the shipwreck and rescued the rye seeds, and they’re trying to bring the long-lost rye back to life. Joining me to talk about this wonderful story are my guests, Dr. Eric Olson, Professor of Wheat Breeding and Genetics at Michigan State University in East Lansing, and Chad Munger, Founder and CEO of Mammoth Distilling based in Bellaire, Michigan. Welcome both of you to Science Friday.

CHAD MUNGER: Thanks, Kathleen.

ERIC OLSON: Thanks for having us.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: So, Chad, let’s start with why this rye is so special. So tell us a little bit about this rye that went down with the Bentley.

CHAD MUNGER: So we don’t know yet that the rye as a grain is special, but it’s historically significant and fits into a much larger narrative about rye in the state of Michigan, actually. And at Mammoth, we are a traditional, very small craft distillery interested in making things with the most local ingredients that we can, grains and fruits.

And we discovered five years ago that Michigan has a very unique history with rye. In fact, in the early 1900s, Michigan was the largest producer and exporter of rye in North America. And we discovered that the variety of rye, rosen, that was responsible for all that growing and selling in the early 20th century, was created at Michigan State, was propagated at Michigan State, which is a story unto itself that led us down a rabbit hole of thinking about other ryes and the possibility of creating a rye specifically for the distilling industry.

But the story of rosen rye grabbed a lot of attention from folks in Kentucky and Tennessee who spend their time making a lot of bourbon, which includes rye. People learned about the rosen rye project, including a guy named Ross Richardson, who is a professional shipwreck diver and an expert in Great Lakes shipwreck history, contacted us and said, I’ve discovered a shipwreck. This shipwreck is very interesting because it has rye whiskey in the hold. Are you guys interested in talking about what we might do with a shipwreck like this, since you’re obviously interested in Michigan agricultural history? We said absolutely.

And that conversation led to a conversation that we had with him. He said, I have a friend who owns a shipwreck in Lake Huron, which is a shocking thing to hear. And he said, I have some wood from that wreck. And would you be interested in having that wood to use in an aging project on some of the whiskey you make? So we absolutely said yes to that.

But when he handed me the box of wood it had on an 8 and 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper that had been photocopied 150 times and was barely legible. But the middle of it said this ship was full of rye grain. And as soon as I saw that written, I said, is that real, Ross? Is that actually what’s in that ship, and is there any left? And he said, absolutely. That boat is full of nothing but grain. And so the short version of that is we cut a deal with them to have access to some of the rye. And part of that deal was we had to let them go get it for us because that’s where [INAUDIBLE]. The adventurous part of that is what we’re all interested in.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Yeah. So let’s talk about that adventurous part. So it’s my understanding were part of this team that rescued these seeds. So can you tell us a little bit about what that process was like on the day of the rescue?

CHAD MUNGER: It’s a dream, right? This is kid stuff. Three divers who do this for a living, Paul, Ross, and Dusty, right out of central casting. They are professional shipwreck divers. When you see pictures of them, you know it immediately. So they brought two boats to Lake Huron, and they used things in their garage, I think, to come up with three really ingenious collection tools, which could be extract grain from the hulls and then could be sealed underwater so that it wouldn’t leak out on the way back up and that it could be maintained in one place on ice for the trip back to East Lansing because 38-degree water with no oxygen keeps things intact.

But as soon as those things warm up or come in contact with oxygen, they begin to degrade immediately. In fact, as soon as you got it to the surface, you smelled it. And it’s really not very pleasant

KATHLEEN DAVIS: By the time you got them, Eric, what was the state of the seeds?

ERIC OLSON: Oh, it was a mixed bag of seed quality. And it was certainly related to where the grain was situated on the grain pile in the hold of the ship. On the interior, roughly half of the grain sample was bright in color, very much intact. You could still distinguish all of the components. You could see the embryo and the brush end. And the grain itself was very much intact. So they were imbibed with water. So they were a little bit squishy. But if you accidentally squeezed a seed too hard, you would actually see that starch. There was 160-year-old carbohydrates left in that grain. I mean, it was still very much intact.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: So you get these seeds into the lab. How did you try to get them to germinate?

ERIC OLSON: So plants use hormones just like mammals. They have a hormone system that controls their growth and development. And seed germination is just one of those normal developmental pathways that’s triggered by, in this case, the hormone gibberellic acid. And so this is folks that work with seeds that are dormant. This is pretty conventional to apply concentrated gibberellic acid to these seeds just to jumpstart start this process.

So we applied it to some of the grain that came directly out of the water, so right away starting the germination process. But then others, we applied a cold treatment and then germinating them at room temperature. It didn’t work either. But we were undeterred. We kept going. And so we dried some of the seed down to simulate that natural process of seeds absorbing water from their environment. That’s part of the germination process. So we were trying to simulate a more natural germination process.

Well, that didn’t work either, but it wasn’t the end of the road. We weren’t done right there. We were undeterred. So it wasn’t just that we couldn’t get the seeds to germinate. With the ultimate goal of reviving this rye variety for production in Michigan, we’re not done yet with just the attempts to germinate that seed. There’s still more to do.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Well, what are you trying to do now?

ERIC OLSON: While we may not have generated plants from the seed, what was left in that seed is essentially the blueprint for Bentley rye, which is the genome, the DNA. Because those seeds were very much intact, the starchy part of the grain actually contains about 30% more DNA than the actual roots, the stems, and leaves, and those tissues. So it’s got extra, extra DNA in there, extra genome.

We isolated DNA directly from those seeds. And we’re going to move forward with sequencing from end to end for all seven of those rye chromosomes. We’re going to get a contiguous sequence of those As Ts, Cs and Gs, those chromosomes that are present in the Bentley rye are present in other rye varieties, modern rye varieties. So modern rye varieties contain segments of DNA that are identical, or that we will find these segments that are identical to those chromosome segments in the Bentley rye.

And we’ll essentially be able to reverse engineer the Bentley rye genome from modern varieties just using modern plant breeding techniques. So we’ll be able hybridize different rye varieties that have shared segments of their chromosomes and find those chromosomes that are bringing together, essentially, the complete genome, then, of the Bentley rye variety.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: So, Chad, what is the goal here if you’re able to resuscitate this rye?

CHAD MUNGER: Our very large-picture goal is to create a brand-new variety of rye made specifically for the distilling industry. So modern plant breeding focuses almost entirely on maximizing yield in grain. And that’s great. That provides a lot of calories and a lot of fuel for the world, but it does it at the expense typically of the character of the grains that are being modified.

In this situation, we’re going to breed for two things, better agronomic properties, so better root structure, better stem structure, higher yield in the field. But at the same time we’re going to breed for characteristics that make these better food products. For us, whisky, so whisky with more character, whisky with more 4-VG, which is one of the compounds that makes rye spicy when you make whisky out of it, and other things. And we’re going to do them at the same time.

So the interest the industry has in the rosen rye project that we started is, we hope, will continue on with a brand new variety of rye created specifically for the industry that makes it more attractive to growers and more attractive to distillers not just in Michigan but in Kentucky and Tennessee where the vast majority of distilling in this country goes on, so effectively creating a brand new market for a very old grain and reintroducing a market economy that thrived in Michigan 120 years ago and then disappeared.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: And so it sounds different varieties of rye will affect how a whisky tastes. Do you have any predictions for what Bentley rye whiskey might taste like?

CHAD MUNGER: I don’t think we do. And it’s got obvious historic value here. It provides us with access to genes that just don’t exist in seed banks today. So it extends the genes that we can select from when we’re making this whiskey. But we don’t with any certainty that the genes out of the Bentley rye will be the perfect grain for us for our purposes here, but almost certainly some portion of it will be.

The first exciting thing we’re going to do is see what Bentley rye looks like and tastes like when you grow it out at scale. And from then, we’re going to take the best portions of that and combine it with the best portions of the varieties that we already have in hand. We know rosen rye is a premium product that we can grow here in Michigan. So very likely that some elements, some genes from rosen and genes from Bentley will be combined.

But there are other varieties that Eric’s dealing with that are proven agronomically around the world. As climate change is happening, and it’s certainly happening to us here in Michigan, rye is an important crop because at its very nature, is very sustainable. It’s drought-tolerant. Soil conditions can vary widely, and it still can thrive. And as things warm up, Michigan becomes a more and more exciting place to be growing rye.

So we’re going to select for characteristics that make it even more tolerant in the environment that we have to offer here in Michigan. And this is a long-term play to make Michigan a viable source of grain for the world.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Well, I’ll have to ask you to send me a bottle of that Bentley rye once it’s up and running. But we have run out of time. This was such a wonderful conversation. Thank you both for joining me.

CHAD MUNGER: Thank you so much. This is a thrill.

ERIC OLSON: Thank you. Kathleen Thanks for having us.

KATHLEEN DAVIS: Doctor Eric Olson is a Professor of Wheat Breeding and Genetics at Michigan State University, and Chad Munger is the Founder and CEO of Mammoth Distilling in Bellaire, Michigan. After the break, debunking some nutrition misinformation. Stick around. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios.

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