Author: cwrc2023dev

Written by: Ellen Cottee

Lead Researcher: Dr. Ron Knox, AAFC – Swift Current

Across the wheat industry, breeders, growers and researchers alike are on the hunt for more ways to improve the crop. From increased yields to higher quality, pest and disease resistance to protein levels, there are several ways to ensure Canada’s wheat is the best it can be.

It will take all members of this chain and many solutions to create the varieties that will carry Canada’s wheat into the future, but one key component is the introduction of biotechnological tools to the process.

Dr. Ron Knox of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada – Swift Current has been working on plant pathology and breeding efforts for much of his career. Leading his newest project, Application of Biotechnological Tools to Wheat Breeding, Knox and his team seek to accelerate and improve breeding via futuristic-sounding methods.

Part of the 2018-23 Canadian Wheat Research Cluster, the project uses marker-assisted breeding and double haploid production to assist breeders in their efforts to bring forward the best wheat yet.

“Breeders have been working at their craft for decades, so it’s getting harder and harder to make those increases in performance, yield, all those components,” Knox explained. “The application of these technologies is a tool that allows them to continue making those marginal increases.”

Marker-assisted breeding allows researchers to use established or newly developed markers to identify key traits in lines of wheat selected for crossbreeding as parents. Once these lines are confirmed to have desired traits, researchers and traditional breeders work together to plan and construct crosses around these traits and their expression in the plant.

Another component of the project’s research is in double haploid production, a process that can cut traditional breeding from five or six plant generations to one. Focusing on the female gamete of the plant, researchers stimulate egg division in a wheat plant using corn, as no genetic material from the corn carries through. Because the embryo comes from a single plant, it is genetically pure or homogenous, creating predictability for breeding.

It’s not just the time saved on breeding cycles that benefits breeders; double haploid breeding also ensures fewer recombinations, or shuffling of the genes, making it easier to predict the genes and traits the plant will exhibit.

“Our strategy is to use simple crosses of elite lines that have complementary traits,” Knox said. “Getting combinations of genes and being able to recycle that improved line back into breeding as a parent, that greatly improves the breeding efficiencies.”

This research will allow traditional breeders to create new varieties with strong economic benefits, including pest resistance, performance in the field and quality.

Looking to the future of biotechnological tools in wheat breeding, Knox believes greater understanding of the wheat genome will identify further trait markings, such as yield and stress resistance. Putting this research into breeding, however, isn’t necessarily simple.

“Those traits have a lot of interaction with the environment, so it’s that much more challenging to validate the markers – we have to sample environments, which means testing populations in multiple locations over multiple years, he explained. “That takes patience and continued support.”

Written by: Ian Doig

Canada is the fifth largest wheat producing nation in the world, and most of the nation’s crop is grown on the Prairies. As wheat represents such a foundational part of the region’s farm economy, the importance of cultivar development is self-evident. “It’s very, very critical to continuously develop new varieties of CPS wheat for Western Canada,” said Harpinder Randhawa, research scientist and wheat breeder with the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Lethbridge Research and Development Centre. CPS breeding and end-use quality has evolved over the years, he added.

 “We do three levels of cultivar improvement,” said Randhawa. “We look into their economic performance, disease package and resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses. We also either maintain or improve the functional quality and use quality of wheat.”

 CPSR varieties have typically exhibited protein, hardness and gluten strength in the medium category. While protein and hardness characteristics have remained in this desirable range, the development of various types of bread by grain purchasing nations has changed market requirements for gluten characteristics. Demand has pushed breeders to increase gluten strength to where it is on par with CWRS varieties and even beyond.

HY2090 is a Canada Prairie Spring Red (CPSR) cultivar Randhawa and his AAFC team have developed with supplementary funding under the most recent five-year Canadian National Wheat Cluster. Now in the seed production stage, it has been given the name AAC Westlock. The moniker is a tip of the hat to the town of Westlock, which is located north of Edmonton where CPS acreage is particularly high. It exhibits the qualities end-users demand as well as a strong agronomic package. AAC Westlock is six to seven per cent higher yielding than control variety AAC Penhold. A semi-dwarf cultivar preferred by farmers, it has excellent straw strength. The variety’s very good disease package includes resistance to FHB, leaf rust, stripe rust, stem rust and common bunt as well as to stem rust varieties not yet prevalent in Canada. In the aggregate, these positives add up to an economic win on a farmer’s balance sheet.

Notably, AAC Westlock was developed with the assistance of the double haploid breeding process and genetic marker technology in a mere six years, whereas 10 years has been more typical. “Genomic selection is one of the tools that we have,” said Randhawa. “We try to deploy all the breeding tools that are available to us to aid in making selections or predictions for development of new cultivars.” The new variety will be marketed by SeCan and is expected to be available for purchase by farmers in 2024.

As pleased as he is with this latest breeding success story, Randhawa emphasized that cultivar improvement is an ongoing process that responds to the evolving needs of farmers and end users. The low moisture conditions experienced during the 2021 and 2022 growing seasons seriously impacted crops in various regions of the Prairies. In response, the AAFC breeding program is now examining its germplasm stock for traits that can boost the resilience of crops in the face of harsh summer conditions. “The last couple of years, we have been hit very hard with drought and heat, and we are looking into germplasm that can help us develop cultivars that are resistant to abiotic stresses, especially drought,” said Randhawa.

Written by: Ian Doig

In April 2022, Harwinder Sidhu took the reins of the winter wheat breeding program at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Lethbridge Research Centre. For the full year prior, he worked with now-retired head breeder Rob Graf on the transition. Sidhu’s first year with program coincided with the final field season for its winter wheat cultivar development under the most recent five-year Canadian National Wheat Cluster.

Sidhu plans to maintain the program’s track record as a producer of valuable, new CWRW varieties with a focus on improvement to yield and quality as well as pest and disease resistance. “You always want to keep improving your germplasm and your varieties,” he said. “New or evolved pathogens arise that render your previous varieties either susceptible or no longer the best fit. Updated varieties are our best bet to ensure wheat production on the Prairies is robust.”

 The program will see two lines move to registration over the next two to three years. The most recently registered line, W614 has been named AAC Overdrive. As its name suggests, the variety exhibits qualities that go above and beyond. “It’s one of the most disease resistant winter wheat varieties to come out of this program,” said Sidhu. “Our goal is that every next line that is supported for registration strives to match its disease resistance profile so farmers can trust that their lines will perform well in the field under high disease pressure.”

While spring wheat breeding can be sped up by contra-seasonal cropping in locations such as New Zealand, this is not possible with winter wheat, which remains dormant in the soil over winter. The program will also work to adopt new genotyping tools and processes to reduce cost and speed up the variety development pipeline that now takes 10 to 12 years. For instance, this will include the use of drone sensor and software technology to conduct field work such as measuring the height of field plots over the course of hours rather than days as is the case when done manually. Such processes speed up the rate at which germplasm with unfavourable traits is discarded, which accelerates development.

Part of its ongoing work, the Lethbridge program has built an extensive germplasm bank to support breeding activities. This allows breeders to target diverse traits that include disease and drought resistance, and its solid-stem germ plasm may aid the fight against wheat stem sawfly.

Sidhu emphasized the AAFC winter wheat program works for farmers. He welcomes their input, which he said shapes the direction of breeding targets. “This is their own program. We produce varieties that work best for them.”

The crop has well-known inherent strengths as a rotational option, but Sidhu emphasized continuous variety improvement will ensure this remains the case. “We will continue developing varieties that increase the confidence of farmers in growing winter wheat and also providing them options for different market classes. We will keep targeting our key areas of yield improvement, resistance and quality, but also foray into new tool exploration and development and see how we can improve winter wheat breeding even further.”

Written by: Ian Doig

In 2016, winter wheat yielded substantially higher than spring wheat across all three Prairie provinces. Statistics Canada pegged the numbers at six per cent in Alberta, 26.5 per cent in Saskatchewan and 25.4 per cent in Manitoba. This alone makes a compelling case for increased acreage, but there are many reasons farmers should grow more winter wheat, according to Brian Beres, a senior research scientist at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Lethbridge Research and Development Centre.

It is resilient to climate challenges, performs ecological services and simply makes business sense, said Beres. His research project conducted for the latest five-year wheat cluster sought to improve winter wheat agronomic management. While field work wrapped in 2022, certain aspects will remain ongoing.

The crop’s competitive lifecycle is certainly central to its high yield potential. Seeded in fall, the young plants capture early spring sunshine and moisture that fuels their growth. As they out-compete weeds and avoid certain insect cycles, this may reduce the need for inputs. Further, winter wheat can be employed like a cover crop that anchors residue in the fall and produces a harvestable crop rather than requiring termination. Early harvest also benefits cashflow. Generating dollars earlier in the year allows for better business management. With field work spread over the year, sowing winter wheat can also reduce capital expenditure on equipment. All this while it provides habitat for waterfowl and upland game birds.

Because it requires fall seeding, farmers are often reluctant to take on the logistical challenge of additional field work. Beres is adamant it’s possible and cited the example of farmers who sow winter wheat in the morning and harvest crops in the afternoon. In fact, Alberta winter wheat farmers have their practices nicely dialled in, said Beres. He has spent much of the past 25 years on management improvement while AAFC Lethbridge breeder Rob Graf, now retired, handled the genetic side. “The way science works, it’s not always sexy, transformational innovations,” said Beres. “Together, we incrementally improved the system to the point where it has become harder and harder for somebody say, ‘Well, the practices and the genetics just aren’t there.’”

His work now focuses on the wheat phase of crop rotation. Because canola maturity has become progressively later, his team has developed ways to better sequence it with winter wheat. And there is work yet to be done on yield with an increased focus on yield stability. “It’s great for us to demonstrate improved yield, but can you bring that yield up and maintain it from field to field, year to year, province to province?” Ongoing research will also examine new and emerging crops for their potential compatibility with winter wheat. An additional component of the project is a long-term rotational study to measure potential advantages in the substitution of winter wheat for wheat classes such as CWRS, CPSW and CNHR.

This farmer-funded and driven line of study continues to generate innovative management practices, said Beres. “This project is going to give farmers further confidence they can adopt winter wheat and be successful at in their area.”

Written by: Ian Doig

On the northern Prairies, diseases and growing conditions, including soil type and climate, differ considerably from those to the south. Funded by the Canadian National Wheat Cluster, Santosh Kumar and his team at the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) Brandon Research and Development Centre develop CWRS wheat varieties in line with the unique requirements of northern farmers.

With the short growing season and colder nights, plants have less time to complete their lifecycle, said Kumar. “Plants must have certain unique traits to survive the northern Prairies. We do additional adaptation testing on the northern area to acclimatize the plants, so they can survive these pressures but also yield premium quality CWRS wheat.”

Growth conditions are not uniform within the vast parkland region that extends from northeastern British Columbia to northern Manitoba. While northern CWRS varieties are tested in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and B.C.’s Peace River Country, northern Alberta is the focus of breeding work. “We target our lines where maximum acreage is located, because that’s where the maximum benefit to the farmers is,” said Kumar. Primary variety crossing work is carried out at the AAFC Beaver Lodge Research Farm. “We grow and select the early generation germ plasm there, so it is screened in the region where it is targeted.”

Further development is carried out in Brandon, where the resistance package is broadened to include pests and diseases not prevalent in the north. This increases the resilience of northern varieties in the event these threats invade the region. This versatile resistance package has seen northern CWRS varieties adopted beyond the region. For example, though developed for the north, AAC Redwater has been grown by farmers across Manitoba for its early maturity as well as Fusarium and midge resistance.

Two years ago, Kumar’s team improved upon AAC Redwater with the release of AAC Redstar. Though it is northern-specific, with its maximized resistance to Fusarium, it can be grown across the Prairies. The team also recently developed early maturing, highly midge resistant AAC Darby and its refuge pairing AAC Hassler.

Farmers are the biggest motivators of this breeding program. Their input has identified three focus areas, said Kumar. With older varieties, northern farmers often produced feed wheat. “We took that to heart, and we said, ‘OK, what do we need to improve?’” Paying close attention to falling number as a quality indicator, Kumar worked to improve resistance to pre-harvest sprouting by pyramiding multiple genes that have this effect. “Sometimes farmers are harvesting when it’s snowing,” he said. “So, if the temperature is low and moisture conditions are high, AAC Redstar does not lose the grade.”

Stripe rust resistance is also critical to northern varieties. This, too, was strengthened in AAC Redstar. Thirdly, southern semi-dwarf varieties tend to grow taller when seeded in the north, so the team introduced ultra-semi-dwarf genetics to discourage lodging and promote yield over the growth of the plant body.

“We incorporated these three major traits, so farmers get a consistent yield advantage, disease protection and the quality profile they expect from CWRS,” said Kumar.