In the 1980s and 1990s, researchers and seed companies were hot on the trail of a scientific breakthrough they thought would revolutionize the wheat industry – hybrid wheat.
For example, in 1997, HybriTech, a seed business owned by Monsanto, reported it had 2,000 hard red winter hybrid combinations in various stages of development throughout the U.S. Great Plains.
The company said it would produce 2,440 new hybrid wheat varieties of varying classes in 1997-98 and released three that year.
It predicted the hybrids would soon provide farmers with more consistent and higher yields.
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An academic study published in 1998 echoed that view.
“Hybrid wheat in the Great Plains of the U.S.A. has shown a fundamental yield, responsiveness and selection gain advantage over pure-line varieties that could result in acceptance by producers,” it concluded.
Despite those glowing words, for a variety of reasons hybrid wheat never took root in North America.
Other than two U.S. winter wheat varieties, no hybrid wheat is grown commercially in Canada and the United States.
According to industry experts, no research on hybrid wheat is being carried out.
“It just proved to be a bit of a dead end,” said Ron DePauw, long-time wheat breeder at Agriculture Canada’s research center at Swift Current, Sask.
“There’s no significant work going on that I’m aware of.”
DuPont ended its hybrid wheat program in 2002, blaming limited market demand, low crop prices and limited ability to use hybrids to deliver genetically modified traits.
Monsanto followed suit two years later, getting out of wheat research altogether. Besides HybriTech, it also owned AgriPro Seeds, which also worked on hybrid wheat.
Some work is still done in South Africa, India and Australia.
Rob Bruns, who once worked for AgriPro and is now in charge of Syngenta’s seed business in the U.S. and Canada, said while hybrid wheat may be dormant, he believes it will come back to life.
“It’s not a question of if, but when,” he said. “Wheat is a big and important world crop and if you could get that extra yield and extra stability built in, it would really help.”
He said there’s a lot of potential value in hybrid wheat for producers, seed companies and the world’s hungry.
There are a number of reasons why hybrid wheat hasn’t caught on.
Crops such as corn, soybeans, canola and rye are cross-pollinated, which makes it much easier to generate seed for making a hybrid.
Self-pollinating crops, such as wheat, barley, oats and flaxseed, lack the genetic predisposition for hybridization.
Wheat also produces relatively small amounts of pollen, adding to the difficulties.
Methods have been developed to overcome that disadvantage, but they tend to be complicated and costly, DePauw said.
That means substantially higher seed production costs, which are passed onto producers in the form of higher retail prices.
Bruns said those costs can be as much as double traditional varietal seed.
Weighed against that are the benefits of higher and more stable yields.
Research trials over the years have shown hybrids provide a yield advantage of eight to 15 percent, varying by region.
Canadian hybrids would likely be at the low end of that range for a variety of agronomic and biological factors, said Bruns. By comparison, the U.S. Great Plains would be around 12 percent.
“So let’s say you start at 12 percent and increase that over time as you find the right combinations for heterosis (hybrid vigour),” he said. “That’s a lot of value in itself.”
Other possible advantages from hybrids include better performance under stress, the ability to “stack” a number of disease resistance traits, shorter time needed to make changes to deal with new production issues and a better relationship between yield and protein.
However, Bruns acknowledged that it doesn’t make economic sense.
For example, assume a 10 percent yield advantage. At 40 bushels per acre and a price of $6 per bu., that works out to an additional $24 an acre gross income.
Of that, probably $16 would have to go to the grower, leaving $8 for the seed company.
“Given the costs of producing the seed, that just wouldn’t pencil out,” he said.
DePauw said one of the drawbacks from producers’ perspective is that they have to buy the hybrid seed every year. Replanting the seed from the previous year is not an option.
“You lose 50 percent of the yields with every generation, something called in-breeding depression,” he said. “You’re a captive customer of the seed companies.”
Bruns said a technological breakthrough, such as genetic modification, is needed before hybrid wheat can become a reality.
“If you could get all the bugs out, it would be a tremendous value to the grower,” he said.
“But if it was simple, it would have been done by now.”
