Relief is in sight for farmers weary of battling the tiny orange bug known as wheat midge.
Scientists hope that in three or four years they will have a variety of wheat that’s unappealing to midge as a place to lay eggs and wreak havoc with yields.
Two teams of researchers are working on breeding different types of resistance into wheat.
At Agriculture Canada’s Cereal Research Centre in Winnipeg, Ron McKenzie is helping introduce genetic material into wheat that repels and kills the bug.
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Four years ago, he was using genetic material from U.S. soft red winter wheat cultivars to work on Hessian fly resistance. An entomologist suggested the material might also work on wheat midge.
McKenzie started crossing the material with Canada prairie spring wheat varieties, then hard red spring and extra strong varieties.
In some crosses, insects avoid laying eggs on the wheat head. In others, they lay eggs, and larvae start to feed on the kernel, but soon die.
Still a mystery
In both cases, the insects don’t stick around in the field to reproduce the next year, said McKenzie.
Scientists aren’t sure what kills the insects, but they know it works.
This summer was the first time the adapted varieties have been tested for yield.
“Some of the yields look quite good,” said McKenzie. “We still have to sort out whether the quality is going to be adequate for each class.”
Soft wheats generally have lower protein and gluten strength than other spring wheats. Flour from soft wheat is often used for cookies or pastry, or blended with stronger wheats for bread.
Some midge resistant CPS varieties may go into testing next summer. If everything goes well, they could be registered in three years and available for seed multiplication.
At the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre, Pierre Hucl is making crosses with a German wheat variety.
Higher levels of naturally occurring phenolic acids in the bran partly explain why the German material helps lines stand up better to midge, he said.
But he wants to know more about why some German and American wheats have more tolerance.
“The only problem is we don’t know what the chemical is that is giving us resistance or immunity in those winter wheats,” said Hucl.
“We know, obviously, it’s harmful to the insect. We don’t know if it’s potentially harmful to people as well, so that needs to be checked out.”
Hucl is also incorporating the American material used by Agriculture Canada scientists to breed a wheat resistant on two fronts.
While the German material strengthens tolerance to wheat midge, reducing damage by four to five times, the U.S. material provides near immunity, cutting damage by 20 fold, he said.
Midge are more likely to mutate and adapt to wheat with immunity, so Hucl said it’s important to have a “two-pronged attack.”
But he’s not willing to predict when researchers will be able to combine the two.
“To pull them (resistant genes) out without bringing down the baking quality of the breeding lines is not that easy,” he said.
Hucl worries farmers expecting resistance by 2001 could be disappointed.
