Wheat researchers at the University of Alberta are using a simple pop-up test to improve straw strength in wheat grown under the high precipitation of the parkland region.
“The latest wheat varieties for Western Canada feature substantial yield improvements, but this has not always been accompanied by increased straw strength,” said wheat breeder Dean Spaner.
“This can lead to greater incidence of lodging under the normally wetter, high-growth conditions of the parkland.”
In the pop-up test, a sheet of plywood is dragged over wheat rows to simulate the effect of heavy rainfall. The lines that pop up are those with the best potential to resist lodging.
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The lines with good straw strength can be used as breeding material for new varieties, Spaner said.
“Since lodging causes everything from lower yields to higher disease incidence and quality reductions, these stronger strawed varieties would represent substantial benefits for producers.”
Straw strength is a major new priority that adds to the university’s traditional research on early maturity, Spaner said.
The program now concentrates on germplasm development – the early stages of wheat breeding that involve selecting and improving traits that can be eventually bred into new varieties. Researchers test material from across Western Canada and beyond, and work directly with wheat breeders to feed promising lines into variety-development efforts.
Spaner recently completed his first year as leader of the university wheat program and has helped set the stage for a new phase of long-term progress.
“The emphasis has been on tweaking our targets and collaborating with other programs to strengthen our foundation,” he said.
“The straw strength effort is a good indication of the broad collaboration and sharing of wheat material that drives the program. For example, we are working directly with Ron DePauw of Agriculture Canada in Swift Current, (Sask.,) to develop strong-strawed Canada Western Red Spring germplasm.”
The project uses sources of improved straw strength from previous work at the University of Alberta, Alberta Agriculture, Agriculture Canada, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre in Mexico and from the United States, Japan and New Zealand.
Early maturity remains the program’s main focus, Spaner said. The search for sources of germplasm with early maturity took former breeder Keith Briggs to Mexico where he found numerous prospects at the Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre nurseries, including ones that originated as far away as northeastern China and Mongolia.
More than 450 new sources of early maturity were brought to the Edmonton program. Following field testing in the parkland, those sources were cut to an elite group of around 30 that are used as parent material.
