PLANT BREEDING

In Australia, the cultivars grown for alternative wheat cereals belong to landraces or their re-selections.  Unlike common wheat, these landraces produce lower yields especially under higher input situation.  Yield improvement could be achieved by breeding for disease resistance and suitable agronomic types. 

Our program for soft white wheat aims at improving the disease resistance of the variety Rosella, particularly for resistance to rusts and cereal cyst nematodes (CCN).  Disease resistance will also allow the variety to be grown for a dual purpose, for grazing and cropping. 

Due to the importance of grain quality, backcrossing method of breeding is used. The process uses repeated crossing of the improved breeding lines to the commercial parent for retaining the quality.  For each generation, breeding lines with disease resistance and improved agronomic performance are continually re-selected for crossing with the recurrent parent, the commercial cultivar.  To speed up the program, markers linked to the disease resistances and agronomic attributes are used to identify materials for backcrossing early in the program.

Early generation materials are grown as spaced plants  in bird-protected enclosure.  This allows early identification of breeding lines as plant selections. The possibility of growing two crops per year enables rapid generation advance and seed increase.     

An advance line of soft white wheat with  improved disease resistance compared with the variety Rosella.  Breeding lines from different stages of backcrossing have also been selected for yield and quality testing.
                                            

Breeding program in spelt wheat aims at improving grain yield of the variety WestonLite.  Breeding lines have been selected that showed earlier maturity and better disease resistance.  These lines also showed higher yielding potential.