Author: cwrc2023dev

Written By: Ian Doig

“In plant breeding, we generally don’t think in absolutes,” said Pierre Hucl, a wheat breeder with the University of Saskatchewan Crop Development Centre (CDC). “We think in relative terms.” Progress in the 10- to 12-year marathon required to create a new wheat variety is measured against the latest check varieties. In support of this ongoing progress, the CDC received just under $3 million for spring and durum wheat variety development in the latest five-year Canadian National Wheat Cluster.

“It’s really about critical mass,” said Hucl. “You establish a pipeline and manage it as efficiently as possible.” Such efficiency is key, as the addition of each new gene targeted to resist disease or climate stress may double or triple the base breeding material required to develop a variety. “The funding allowed us to do that,” said Hucl. “In Durum and spring wheat, we achieved our goals.”

Recent new variety releases include CDC Vantta, a semi-dwarf durum. It is short-strawed with high yellow pigment. Described as something of a replacement for the older Navigator variety, it enters commercial production in 2023. In spring wheat, CDC SKRush is a high yielding, mid-maturity variety that features a new dwarfing gene. To Hucl’s knowledge, the gene has not previously been deployed in CWRS wheat.

Hucl also describes dough strength or extensibility as a critical end-use trait CDC has concentrated on. In CWRS, stronger dough properties can compensate for lower protein levels to produce great bread. However, milling wheat lines and testing their dough is expensive and time consuming. To identify desirable lines prior to this step, the CDC team developed a rapid genetic test that will make the process more effective.

Also under the latest Wheat Cluster, the CDC has been able to expand the output of its winter nursery. This will make it more competitive with other wheat breeding entities and move breeding material forward more quickly. The upgrade has doubled the number of contra season outdoor plots CDC sows in New Zealand each winter.

Allowing the CDC to hire the necessary staff, Wheat Cluster funding expanded its employment of breeder chip technology previously developed with funding from Genome Canada. Like rapid COVID tests, this test can quickly and simultaneously identify the presence of several genes in a sample of plant tissue. These can include genes for resistance to disease. Again, this markedly improves the efficiency of variety development by eliminating plant lines earlier in the process.

Wheat Cluster funding has fuelled the CDC’s wheat breeding momentum. “It has put us in a good place,” said Hucl. He cites work the Centre has done to identify novel sources of Fusarium tolerance and resistance. Now that this material is available to breeders it will continue to produce results for years. It will also benefit the wheat industry broadly as CDC shares material with other breeding institutions. “The outcomes of this initiative are going to be seen way beyond the final report,” added Hucl. “The most interesting outcomes of these big projects are often seen later and are sometimes totally unexpected.”

Written by: Ellen Cottee

Lead Researcher: Dr. Alejandro Costamagna, University of Manitoba

As many farmers know, there is only so much they can do to guarantee a good crop – and all that hard work can be undone by a pest less than an eighth of an inch long. Fond of spring and durum wheat in particular, wheat midge are born ready to destroy a crop through their appetite.

Currently, wheat midge in the prairies are largely controlled through the use of varieties with the Sm1 gene, which kills midge larvae as they feed on the plant with minimal damage to the wheat. However, there is a risk this protection will be overridden by evolution: wheat midge are able to mutate through each generation, eventually becoming resistant to effects of the Sm1 gene.

While the risk is still years away, Dr. Costamagna at the University of Manitoba wants to be sure Canadian farmers are ready to fight back against wheat midge if that day comes. Through funding from the 2018-2023 Canadian National Wheat Cluster, he began research on another mitigation opportunity found in wheat genetics – volatiles.

“The chances you have individuals with mutations that allow them to overcome the Sm1 gene and also these chemicals are very, very reduced,” Costamagna explains. “That’s what we call pyramiding resistance.”

When laying eggs, midge prefer a precise moment in wheat growth – indicated to them through plant volatiles, or tiny chemical compounds they sense in the area. Researchers working on the Sm1 gene found some varieties of wheat were unattractive to wheat midge due to the specific volatiles the plants emit.

The first step in Costamagna’s research is identifying the volatiles that repel wheat midge by collecting the volatiles produced by the plant at the time they are most at risk of midge damage – a complicated undertaking, as wheat produces a lot of volatiles in different concentrations.

These compounds are then sent to Dr. Kirk Hillier, a biologist and professor at Acadia University, who uses electroantennogram equipment to determine which volatiles provoke a reaction in the midge. At this point in the process, this reaction is neither good or bad – that comes later, through a process to indicate whether a set of volatiles compels or repels the midge.

“The good thing is, we’re making progress,” he says. “We found compounds we think are associated with deterrence – we’re trying to follow up on those to see if they lead us to the genes we are after.”

The next step is to identify which genes control these volatiles and how they can be ‘turned on’ to promote resistance in more varieties of wheat – however, that can only come with further experiments and assessing midge reactions.

One of the most important factors in this research is accessibility to a large, controlled wheat midge population. Luckily, Canada is home to one of the only viable midge colonies producing enough for use in experiments.

Working with living research subjects as particular as midge has proven difficult. “Wheat midge has an obligate diapause, or pause in development, of 6 months, which makes it difficult to have insects available for experiments without a very large colony size.”

“Until you get to do it, you don’t realize the amount of preparation it takes to do some rather simple-in-appearance experiments,” Costamagna said. “We have a power failure, the temperature rises for a few hours, and we have a high midge mortality.”

Costamagna and his team continue to look for funding opportunities, and he stresses the importance of maintaining the wheat midge colony.

“It’s quite unique in the world, and it takes time and expertise to get going,” he explains. “If we stop maintaining the colony, then there is no guarantee you’ll have another one to experiment with when the time comes.”

Written by: Ellen Cottee

Lead Researcher: Dr. Richard Cuthbert, AAFC-Swift Current

The wheat industry is always looking for the best: the highest yield, the strongest resistance, top quality, and the goal of strong marketability. It can be difficult to find a variety to check these boxes, but Dr. Cuthbert with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada – Swift Current is ready to take on the challenge with his latest work in Canadian Prairie Spring Red (CPSR, or CPS Red) breeding research.

Funded in part through the Canadian Wheat Research Coalition’s 2018-2023 cluster, Cuthbert’s research is all about breeding the best CPSR wheat to give farmers a great crop and versatility to enter multiple markets.

“This is a continuation of a lot of work that has been done over the decades,” Cuthbert says about his work. “We’ve worked for many years to breed and improve high-yielding bread wheat varieties for the CPS red market class for farmers.”

The benefit of CPSR wheat is its middle-of-the-road quality, saleable to milling and export markets or feed markets, as opposed to its cousin, Canadian Western Spring wheat, and its place as a premium market product.

“Some people have said you can ride two horses with CPSR,” Cuthbert explains. “That’s really the focus of this, to push grain yield while maintaining milling characteristics.”

Also setting CPSR and CWS apart are the differences in quality parameters varieties fit into, such as limitations on trait selection and use quality. These reduced restrictions in CPSR allow wheat breeding programs to create higher performing lines with diverse genetics and traits, opening more opportunities for research and farmers alike.

“You can have stronger gluten strength, a little more room around milling yield and flower ash,” Cuthbert explained. “Some of those traits that make CWS elite, we have a little bit more room to operate on.”

Cuthbert and his team focus on breeding for high yield and strong diversity, found by using common genomic breeding practices including marker assisted selection and doubled haploidy production.

The research has been successful, with new variety HY2136 gaining registration support at the 2023 Prairie Grain Development Committee annual meeting. Yielding 19% over AC Brandon and 9% over the highest yielding CPS red variety currently available, HY2136 also checks boxes for leaf rust, stem rust, and loose smut resistance, and bears the Sm1 gene for wheat midge resistant.

HY2136 is generated through the crossing of CPS Penhold, CWS variety CDC Titanium, and an advanced line previously Cuthbert’s team created, incorporating high-yield germplasm from both Canada and Australia.

“It brought a lot of things together,” Cuthbert explained. “It’s from a cross that a lot of people would not have made if it weren’t for this type of funding that allowed for these intermediary steps and bringing diversity together.”

Other varieties from Cuthbert’s work are in the pipeline, also scoring high yield and milling quality – along with the ability to cut across different markets.

“It gives the farmer a lot of options, especially in regions where livestock is involved,” Cuthbert said. “You can bolster your feed and forage, and also fulfill milling markets if so desired.”

While the farmer benefits are important, Cuthbert also emphasizes the significance of this work for the future of wheat breeding.

“Where this work will really shine is in providing that stepping block and building parents to move diversity into the highest quality wheat in Canada. It allows that crossover of genetics to happen much more easily,” he explained. “It is going to take decades, but we have already started it.”

Written by: Ian Doig

Much of the nation’s spring wheat is grown in Western Canada and shipped abroad, but in Quebec and Eastern Canada, most of the crop is purchased domestically. It has increasingly become an important rotational crop where soy and corn dominate, with half the harvest destined for the feed market and the balance milled for flour.

Demand for locally produced flour is very strong Quebec. To ensure supply, millers often contract directly with farmers. Driven by consumer demand, Quebec bakers are particularly interested in flour produced with organically grown wheat. This robust consumer demand presents opportunities for farmers and challenges for wheat breeders. “Millers want more acres and better quality,” said Silvia Rosa, a wheat breeder with the Centre de recherche sur les grains (CÉROM). She recently spoke to a milling company representative who told her the outfit would gladly purchase the entire Quebec wheat crop but even this would not meet its needs.

Historically, the end-use quality performance of eastern spring wheat varieties in Quebec and Eastern Canada have been affected by multiple factors. Weather variability and the prevalence of Fusarium head blight (FHB) negatively impact its economic potential. For years, the price of milling wheat has remained relatively close to that of feed wheat, favouring high-yielding wheat, whose bread quality is generally inappropriate.

The CÉROM spring wheat development program improves agronomics and end-use qualities that will allow farmers to profit from domestic demand. The 2018 to 2023 Canadian Wheat Cluster provided $856,686 to fund the Centre’s breeding activities. Additional funds were provided by Producteurs de grains du Québec and SeCan.

On the agronomic side of the breeding equation, Rosa emphasizes the improvement of FHB resistance is critical to the spring wheat disease package. And while leaf rust can be problematic for farmers, stripe rust is an emerging concern. To address the needs of millers and bakers, breeders must combine resistance and yield gains with increased protein content and gluten strength.

The work has been supported by the Centre’s indoor quality lab. Built under the previous wheat cluster, it became operational under the latest. Here, researchers conveniently screen breeding lines for desired quality traits indoors rather than in the field.

The Centre also employs breeding material from across the Americas to identify cultivars broadly adaptable to climate change. Rosa leads the project, which last year began testing an array of international cultivars in Quebec, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. “Among these countries the environmental conditions are very different,” she said. “In the past, I had tested some South American cultivars here and adaptability was very good. I am testing in all these locations to find cultivars that could perform well in all, which should help to find genomic regions associated with resilience to stress and broad adaptability.”

The CÉROM track record in wheat breeding speaks for itself. In 2019, AAC Maurice and AAC Volta was registered to commercialization in the Maritimes, Ontario and Quebec. The two varieties were made available to farmers in 2022. Two additional cultivars have been supported for registration during the last two year and are open to commercial adoption.

“It’s a very important project,” said Rosa. “I hope we can continue with the work.”