Western Canadian farmers are already benefitting from the work of scientists mapping the wheat genome, even though the job isn’t done yet.
The promise of increased efficiency, improved line selection and speedier delivery time to producers makes genetic technology an important tool for plant breeders.
However, scientists have yet to fully crack wheat’s genetic code, despite its standing as one of the world’s staple crops and the fact that the work has already been accomplished in 50 other crops, everything from corn and soybeans to hemp and watermelon.
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Funding for wheat research is one challenge, as is the plant’s complex hexaploid genome. Approximately $50 million US is needed to finish mapping the crop’s 42 chromosomes, according to Nature magazine.
Despite the challenges, researchers have already identified several DNA markers that are used in breeding programs.
Durum and wheat breeder Curtis Pozniak from the University of Sask-atchewan told the Canadian Wheat Symposium in Saskatoon last week about 10 wheat and 12 durum varieties that have been delivered to western Canadian farmers since 2003 with the assistance of new technology to select for desired crop traits.
Wheat breeders can use “marker assisted selection” to help select plants for characteristics including cold and drought tolerance, gluten strength, pre-harvest sprouting and resistance to wheat rust, fusarium head blight and insects.
“Being able to dissect the genome in a meaningful way to identify all of the parts that we need to identify can certainly be challenging, but as the sequencing technology has evolved over the last number of years, we are now able to tackle sequencing the genome in a meaningful way and at a reasonable price,” said Pozniak.
The technology was used in the development of the varieties Lillian, Somerset and Burnside to select for high grain protein content. In the case of Lillian, researchers collaborated to use these markers in a doubled haploid system that already significantly speeds up variety development.
“About a third of all of the varieties now registered in wheat are doubled haploid cultivars, and some of the double haploid cultivars were actually selected with molecular markers,” said Ron DePauw, senior principal wheat breeder with Agriculture Canada.
Pozniak referred to an incoming “DNA marker tsunami.”
“I feel a bit overwhelmed, actually, with the amount of information we’re generating in the lab,” he said.
“With millions of markers, it’s going to become a real challenge for breeders to define which markers are useful.”
His wheat and durum research is helping identify a gene for stem solidness.
