Todd Reid, a PhD student at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, was awarded the Organic Crop Improvement Association Research and Education (OCIA R&E) 2008 Scholarship for research on crop breeding for competitive organic spring wheat.
Reid is looking at the inheritance of competitive ability in spring wheat, and determining if wheat lines selected under organic management differ from those selected under conventional management.
OCIA R&E is an organization of organic farmers that assists research to benefit organic farming and encourages education about organic farming. Its members primarily live in Canada, the United States and Latin America.
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Reid’s project is expected to help organic producers select competitive wheat varieties. “This should help them improve both crop yield and weed management on their farms.”
In the long term, Reid said he hopes his research will provide additional tools for plant breeders in breeding wheat cultivars better adapted to organic systems.
Plant competition is complicated. Competitive ability in wheat involves many aspects, such as seedling vigour, early growth rate, leaf width, leaf angle and height. These aspects affect how the plant commandeers resources and claims space.
Reid’s project considers aspects of competition such as canopy closure. The crop canopy is considered closed when crop leaves block light from reaching the ground. Once the canopy closes, weed seedlings are shaded and the competitive advantage goes to the crop.
In wheat, the canopy closes because the wheat produces many stems and because the stems grow at angles. Reid is looking at the relationship between the number of stems and plant spread.
He is looking at selection indices used to select for many traits at once. This is especially useful in breeding for competitive ability because a plant’s ability to compete is controlled by many factors.
Reid compared more than 100 wheat lines grown with and without competition to create his selection indices. The work should enable researchers to more quickly and effectively develop competitive varieties.
His research also provides evidence for a need to create an organic wheat breeding system.
Reid crossed different wheat varieties to produce 79 different breeding lines. He grew these under organic and conventional manage-ment and monitored their performance, and selected the best for each management system.
He found many of the best performing lines selected under organic management were different than the best lines selected under conventional management.
This suggests that organic producers would benefit from wheat breeding specifically in organic systems, producing organic wheat cultivars. It may also spur interest in other field crops and horticultural crops.
Throughout his research, Reid has worked with organic producers, conducting on-farm trials, and sharing the results at farm field days.
He plans to include organic breeding in any program he
develops in his future plant breeding career.
His research has challenged him to approach agriculture with the whole system in mind.
Reid is the fourth winner of the OCIA R&E scholarship. The scholarship is available and advertised throughout North America, but so far three of the four scholarship winners have been Canadian.
Jacqueline Pridham from the University of Manitoba won the scholarship in 2005 for her study of crop mixtures for weed and disease suppression; Shauna MacKinnon from the University of Guelph in Ontario won in 2006 for her study of the impact of organic farming on rural communities.
Brenda Frick, senior research and extension associate for Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada at the University of Saskatchewan, welcomes comments at 306-966-4975 or organic@usask.ca. OACC articles are archived at www.oacc.info.
