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16 I EUROPEAN SEED I EUROPEAN-SEED.COM Mildew whilst still a potential problem has less impact in Europe due to significant success in increasing resistance levels. Interestingly when varieties from other regions of the world are grown in Europe they are often very susceptible to mildew. Orange blossom midge and lemon yellow blossom midge are also problems for farmers causing significant yield loss and quality reduction. Breeders have successfully introduced complete resistance to the orange form but at this time no resistance to lemon yellow midge is available. When looking at breeding targets for abiotic stresses winter hardiness is a key target for breeders in large areas of Europe but there are areas like the U.K. where this is not required. Heat tolerance during grain filling is also a target for breeders to avoid yield reduction and poor grain quality. QUALITY Breeders cant focus solely on increasing yield and building resistance the target end use of wheat also plays a critical part in the equation. More than 50 per cent of French wheat is exported so the quality baking bread protein and physical hectolitre weight grain size clean seed are also major breeding targets Stragliati says. There is a lot of pressure to reduce inputs fungicides nitrogen etc. so varieties that have good disease resistance and also good protein content with high yield are important. This can also be a problem for the French breeder as we are breeding high-yielding winter wheat and we find ourselves competing with low-yielding spring wheat but high protein coming from other countries like Kazakhstan. It is the importing market that makes its choice. BREEDING INVESTMENT Lonnet says that until the 1960s or 1970s the pedigree method was almost the only breeding method used and it is still used today with some improvements being made such as winter generations when feasible. Two other methods are used more and more single seed descent SSD and double haploids DH which can both speed up the breeding cycle by about two years Lonnet says. Breeding is a heavily RD-focussed industry involving the use of expensive high- tech equipment both for laboratory DNA analysis and field work. It also requires highly skilled and trained staff and it is often the case that more than 50 per cent of staff in a breeding company will be university graduates. Since wheat is grown in all temperate regions around the world it is usually not a problem for the breeder to get access to very diverse protected varieties to use as parental lines. Many centres of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources IBPGR through a standard Material Transfer Agreement sMTA also provide public materials such as older varieties or landraces. It should in particular be mentioned that the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center CIMMYT in Mexico used to provide a large range of materials including synthetic wheats which are hexaploid wheats such as bread wheat that are produced by crossing diploid Triticum tauschii accessions by tetraploid durum wheats and doubling the obtained F1. Many French wheats have in their pedigree CIMMYT materials that were used because they carried some resistance to abiotic or biotic stress adds Lonnet. It is often quoted that to breed a new wheat variety it costs on average 2 million. Furthermore it takes between six and 10 years to breed a new variety followed by three to five years before the variety has passed through national registration trials and is available in sufficient quantities to have an impact on the market Verstegen of KWS explains. Stragliati concurs However thanks to systems like DH and SSD we can gain two YIELD INCREASES NEEDED BY 2050 years. Markers also help to identify earlier potential lines so breeders can cross earlier in their material to gain time. I must say that the field still plays a big part in testing the variety but there are ways to go quicker to the field. RENEWED INTEREST IN WHEAT BREEDING The potential opportunities for GM traits to solve recalcitrant problems in wheat fusarium for example and increase yield and nutrient use efficiency have led to some of the major agrochemical and breeding companies entering or re-entering the wheat breeding industry. Wheat is projected to stay as one of the three main food sources currently covering the most arable farming area. Assuming a stable production ratio between rice corn and wheat the future demand will be 1.5 times time todays harvest. A one per cent yield increase per year from today until 2050 will be insufficient to reach this level of growth especially when considering there will be less arable land for farming available by 2050 and increased societal pressure for better sustainability. This creates a strong opportunity for traits that ensure yield increase and yield stability with less agronomic inputs. NEW INNOVATIONS Wheat breeders have been quick to investigate and adopt all the new DNA technologies available. Public and private initiatives have brought the sequencing of the wheat genome forward and many studies on genome trait analysis have been undertaken see page 18 for an article on the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium. Detailed information on what is actually in operational use is hard to obtain but many if not all companies are involved in RD in these areas. There is renewed interest in hybrid wheat and most breeding companies are either working directly on this or are investigating whether to get involved. At the moment there are hybrid varieties on the market produced using chemical hybridisation agents. This is Wheat leaf infected with stripe rust also known as yellow rust Puccinia striiformis. The pustules caused by stripe rust contain yellow to orange- yellow urediospores and usually form stripes on the leaves. Photo credit Thomas LumpkinCIMMYT.