Yield boost: CSIRO explores altering wheats to adapt to changing climate

With climate change expected to result in more droughts for southern Australia, wheat researchers are working on developing cultivars to boost yields.

Reaching out: Australian wheat researchers are concentrating on modifying existing varieties to better adapt them to changing climate patterns. Picture : Zoe Phillips

WITH climate change expected to bring on more frequent droughts, wheat researchers are working towards providing growers with better adapted cultivars to boost performance.

CSIRO wheat geneticist Greg Rebetzke told a Wagga Wagga Grains Research and Development Corporation update discussion, climate change would result in more droughts for southern Australia, including southern NSW.

“Australian breeding programs are among the best in the world for yield under drought as well as quality and disease,” he said.

So the aim now, Mr Rebetzke said, was identifying targeted traits from already commercial wheats in Australia or overseas.

He said a focus was genetics that aimed to reduce plant height and increase yields while maintaining longer coleoptile length.

According to Mr Rebetzke, research work has focused on coleoptile length to help widen the potential for deep sowing of up to 140mm, to make use of stored soil moisture.

“If, for example, we have good rain through summer, but the break for sowing doesn’t arrive, we are limited with our current varieties on how deep they can be sown,” Mr Rebetzke said.

He said scientists had identified a range of dwarfing genes in overseas wheats that could maintain longer coleoptile length without affecting production potential.

“So we bought these genes in from Europe, Russia, Italy and the Mediterranean and have been establishing which of those genes are most likely to be useful for Australian growers, “Mr Rebetzke said.

NSW Farmers grains committee chairman Matthew Madden said a changing climate would be an issue for growers going forward, and research was important to combat this.

“The holy grail in this space is frost tolerance,” he said.

“Farmers are greatly interested (in cultivars) as they can’t change the environment.”

He said growers were having an ”amazing rebound” on yields this season, compared with the past few years, and attributed this to both rainfall and new varieties and genetics.

“It is vitally important that agencies keep investing in varieties,” Mr Madden said.

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