b"OpportunitiesDESPITE DECADES OFresearch and develop-ment, hybrid wheat has not yet made significant inroads into North American fields. While some com-and Challenges ofpanies are pushing forward on efforts to make hybrid wheat a reality, others are stepping back from hybrid wheat research programs, citing challenges with the crops economic viability.Hybrid Wheat Many growers cultivate major crops using hybrid varietiesseeds obtained by crossing two lines of a crop via artificial pollination. The resulting hybrids offer a wide variety of benefits for growers. Most notably, these While hybridization offers manybenefits include higher yield potential, greater vigor and better ability to withstand various stressors. Those advantages and has benefited yields inboosts come thanks to heterosis (hybrid vigor), where many crop types, it hasnt made its waythe growth and yield potential of the hybrid progeny are into wheat in a big way yet. Its not anbetter than either of the parents. Hybridization in plants occurs from crossing two easy road to get it there.Kristen Lepp distinct lines. In wheat, which has hermaphroditic flow-ers that self-pollinate, hybridization requires breeders to remove the plants natural ability to self-pollinate, then artificially pollinate the flowers with pollen from a sepa-rate line. Thats a challenging order for multiple reasons:Wheat only flowers for a short time, leaving a narrow pollination window. It produces very little pollen com-pared to other crops. What pollen it does produce is very heavy, making it more difficult to move from male to female plants. These challenges and others contributed to BASF making the decision to pull its hybrid wheat program from North America in early 2023 after 15 years of research. We tried really, really hard, says Garth Hodges, BASF North American Seed Business vice president, who worked with the hybrid wheat program from the very beginning and was part of the small research team at its inception. The teams did an incredible job. Over the years, we uncovered many learnings, and we've made significant progress with our understanding of hybrid wheat. But despite the tremendous efforts of the expert team, we just could not achieve results that were viable.Another limitation to hybrid wheats economic viability relates to the male/female ratio of plants during the process of seed production or multiplication. In a conven-tional wheat seed production, all plants seed is harvested and sold to farmers to plant. However, in hybrid wheat seed production fields, seed producers of hybrid wheat cultivate a small percentage of male plants alongside female plants. The female plants receive pollen from these male plants, while the male plants self-pollinate. Since only seed from female plants is harvested, the seed from male plantswhich can make up about 25% of the 28/ SEEDWORLD.COMJUNE 2024"