More than just parents

CSIRO Plant Industry’s Dr Ray Shorter and his Brisbane team have found seven new wheat lines, bred from a cross between different breeding lines at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, that produce increased yield and grain size as well as possessing much sought after resistance to leaf, stripe and stem rust.

CSIRO Plant Industry provides breeding companies with lines that exhibit desirable characteristics. Breeders then use these lines to develop new, improved wheat varieties.

The best of the latest lines appear to be performing well enough to be commercial feed wheat varieties, not just parent lines to be used in commercial breeding programs.

CSIRO Plant Industry’s wheat research in Brisbane focuses on characteristics that allow wheat to perform well in Australia’s northern regions. Here, rain occurs mainly during the summer months. Wheat is then planted in high moisture soil in May - June, but lack of winter rain means that plants often face drought during the crucial grain filling stage, towards the end of the season.

Breeding wheat that copes with the unique northern conditions and produces a large number of heavy grains will help meet the feed wheat demands of the regional intensive livestock industries including Queensland’s beef industry, the largest in Australia.

This work is part of CSIRO Plant Industry wheat research aimed at providing farmers with better varieties to help make Australian agriculture more efficient and sustainable.

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