On September 17, 2024, divers extracted a number of rye seeds from the wreckage of the James R. Bentley, a wooden schooner that sunk in November 1878 while carrying a large cargo of rye seeds from Chicago to Buffalo. The seeds were transported by MSU alum and owner of Mammoth Distilling Chad Munger to the lab of MSU Associate Professor Eric Olson, where they were placed in germination boxes and soaked in gibberellic acid to help break down seed dormancy and stimulate germination. Ultimately, germination was unsuccessful after the seeds had sat under water for so many years, but the team hasn’t given up hope of bringing a new variety of rye back to Michigan, which boasted successful rye production back in the early 1900s.
“The seeds aren’t dead at all,” Olson notes, reports MSU Today. “We can revive the genes that were carried in the seeds and use modern genome sequencing techniques to assemble parts of the genome. We’ll be able to sequence the chromosomes of this rye and transfer those chromosome segments into a modern rye variety, essentially reviving a historic rye.”
Through extracting DNA from the seeds, the team hopes to not only be able to determine where the Bentley rye originated, but to create a new variety of rye for the distilling industry, and place Michigan on the map, perhaps with a new Michigan rye trail.
To learn more, visit msutoday.msu.edu.
PHOTOS: MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
