South Perth, Western Australia
September 30, 2009
Future wheat varieties could be suited to a wider range of environments as the result of work by a national research project funded by the Molecular Plant Breeding Co-operative Research Centre (MPBCRC).
The Department of Agriculture and Food WA is contributing to the project, which is focused on determining how wheat varieties adapt the time of flowering to maximise grain production in a range of environments.
The MPBCRC partners are currently assessing both widely adapted historical varieties and new varieties provided by both InterGrain and Australian Grain Technologies (AGT).
All the material is being assessed for photoperiod (sensitivity to day length) and vernalisation (cold requirement) at South Perth research facilitates, as well as yield and heading dates at key field sites.
A total of 194 wheat varieties have been planted at key sites at Eradu, Wongan Hills, Katanning, Merredin and Esperance, in addition to a site at Roseworthy in South Australia, Horsham in Victoria, Narrabri in New South Wales and Goondiwindi in Queensland.
Research officer Dr Ben Biddulph (photo) said the project was now in its second year of operation and should reveal some interesting results after harvest.
“Basically we’re looking at the key genes in these varieties that control flowering time and comparing their performance in different regions,” Dr Biddulph said.
“With this information we hope to be able to more consistently design better varieties in the future.”
Flowering time is a crucial aspect of crop yield and quality, as it determines the environmental conditions under which grains fill.
“Basically, flowering time is influenced by three traits: the plant’s sensitivity to low temperature or vernalisation, which is important in southern crops; sensitivity to day length, which is prominent in the northern grain growing areas and the inherent earliness of the line,” he said.
“There are 48 diagnostic markers that control vernalisation and photoperiod sensitivity. How they interact to control flowering time in different grain growing regions will enable plant breeders to consistently produce varieties with the desired flowering time for different regions.”
But Dr Biddulph said the grains industry will have to wait to see the results of the research.
“We will need at least two years of research to get a big enough dataset to be able to draw credible conclusions,” he said.
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