Tony Kern, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology at Northland College, is interested in rice, but not just any rice—the wild kind. In addition to teaching a wide range of biology courses at the College, Kern conducts research on wild rice, a native plant of the Great Lakes Region that has been in decline in recent years.

Wild rice (Zizania palustris) is a type of grass that grows in the shallow water of lake shores and in the slow moving streams of the Great Lakes Region. Although only distantly related to rice, the flowering head of the plant rises above the water and produces a grain that is very similar to true rice. Wild rice has been an important natural resource for the Ojibwe people of Wisconsin and Minnesota for centuries, first as a traditional source of food and now as a source of income from its harvest and sale. Although commercially available, most of the “wild rice” for sale in stores is cultivated in fields, and only a small amount is still hand-harvested from wild populations. In recent years, some of these truly wild populations have decreased considerably causing great concern among the people who depend on them and raising questions as to why.

That’s where Kern’s research comes in. The first part of his research is to determine how population size affects wild rice genetic diversity. Due to human activities, wild rice habitat has decreased considerably in the last half-century, leaving smaller and smaller swathes of shore line and streambed where the plants can take root. Small, isolated populations of the plant may become inbred through time, further reducing their ability to compete with other plants for the nutrients they need to grow. This can lead to the plant disappearing entirely from a particular body of water, which has happened in hundreds of locations in northern Wisconsin. By monitoring the genetic “health” of wild rice, Kern can determine if a lack of genetic diversity is causing a problem at a particular location or if other factors are causing its decline. This allows him to assist programs that seek to restore wild rice to places where it has disappeared or where the plant is at risk.

The second part of his research involves detecting something called “gene flow.” Gene-flow, in this case, is when pollen from cultivated paddies of wild rice pollinates plants in truly-wild populations—a major concern of many Native American tribes in the region, since most wild rice is cultivated in close proximity to wild populations. It is possible that this process weakens the natural populations by changing their genetic makeup and creating wild/domestic hybrids. “However,” Kern cautions, “until we do the genetics work, these concerns are purely speculative.” One possible application of his research may be to determine the minimum separation distance, also called a “setback,” between cultivated paddies and natural stands of wild rice to prevent this gene flow.

Kern also gets students involved in his work. This school year, he has 5 work-study students helping him with his research. Because of the technical complexity of the research, most of the students involved in the project are upper-level students majoring in biology or natural resources. Kern hires students with a direct interest in learning how the tools of genetics can assist resource management decisions. In addition to work-study students, Kern’s Methods in Molecular Biology course spends much of the semester working with wild rice. In the future, Kern hopes to develop an introductory-level course that encompasses the entire wild rice “story”, including the breeding and genetics issues.