Frost tolerance is a trait many agricultural biotechnology companies are attempting to develop, but it could prove to be an exceedingly difficult endeavor, says a Saskatoon crop breeder.
Brian Fowler, a winter wheat breeder at the University of Saskatchewan, would love to create a strain of wheat that has the same cold tolerance as rye by transferring over one gene.
In reality, however, there is no quick fix.
“It is not going to be as simple as taking a gene out of rye and dumping it into wheat and solving the problem,” he said.
Read Also
Stacking Canada up on gene editing livestock
Canada may want to gauge how Argentina and other countries have approached gene editing in livestock and what that has meant for local innovation.
Genetic modification would require transferring the entire cold tolerance system from one plant to another. Researchers have attempted that with rye and wheat but to no avail, and Fowler doesn’t have much faith biotech companies will have future success.
Rather than looking for the home run, Fowler feels the answer lies in a more methodical research approach.
Breeders need to develop a good basic understanding of how cold tolerance works by studying the DNA of plants that exhibit the trait and then taking small incremental steps at introducing it into other crops through traditional breeding techniques.
“The one place in the world that understanding those systems is probably of the greatest importance is Western Canada,” he said.
Fowler and his team are in the third year of a four year, $8.1 million project to identify and harness genes for cold tolerance in wheat and rye. He is collaborating with researchers in Asia, Europe and Australia who are investigating how to introduce the same trait in other crops.
They are using genomics research techniques to study plants at the DNA level and develop markers that will allow them to select crosses that have the greatest probability of containing cold hardiness genes.
That would greatly enhance plant breeding efforts that until now have relied on field-testing varieties in winterkill conditions that come along once every five or 10 years.
The first tangible benefit for growers out of this research project will be wheat and rye crops that have an improved ability to grow under low temperature conditions in early spring.
“That is one that could happen fairly quickly,” Fowler said.
However, the ultimate goal is to use the research to lower the risk of late-season crop failure. Genome Canada, which is providing $4.1 million in funding for the project, said frost damage to Saskatchewan’s 2003-04 crop amounted to an estimated $500 million, so any additional built-in tolerance would provide a big benefit to farmers.
Fowler said that goal will be more difficult to accomplish because once pollination occurs, plants change in a way that makes them more susceptible to cold temperatures. Any advancements in that area are more than five years away.
However, if researchers are able to gain a better understanding of the mechanisms behind cold hardiness and how to transfer it to wheat, it would likely pique the interest of the U.S. winter wheat industry and its vast resources.
“That could open up the doors for a much greater breeding effort from those companies that are south of the border,” Fowler said.
Canadian producers would also benefit from renewed interest in wheat breeding, he added.
