Association Perspectives

USDA Delivers New Investments and Tools to Accelerate Wheat Breeding

In 2007 U.S. corn growers harvested an average of 152.8 bushels per acre, up 16 bushels or 12 percent from a decade earlier. In contrast, wheat growers harvested a national average crop of 40.6 bushels per acre, unchanged from a decade ago.

It’s obvious that genetic improvements for wheat have not kept up with the improvements made in crops such as corn and soybeans. These crops have benefited greatly from private companies who have made larger and broader investments in variety development than any public program has done. Wheat variety development relies mostly on public investment. Wheat growers do recognize the importance of the few private companies that continue to invest and release new wheat varieties. However, it is nowhere near the private investment made in corn and soybeans.

Genetic improvements seem to be directly related to the amount of investment that can be made in a breeding program. So it’s exciting to see a relatively new USDA program that will increase the investment and make resources and tools available to university wheat breeders so they can accelerate the release of improved wheat varieties. This new program is called the Coordinated Agriculture Project (CAP) which is a multi-state, multi-university project. The grant also allows 25 state universities and their wheat breeding programs to get together and focus on new breeding tools and resources. This coordinated effort was successful in the grant process and scientists began working together and receiving funds late in 2005.

The USDA-CSREES grant program funded the Wheat CAP at a level of $1.25 million annually for four years. The funding is shared among the network of 36 scientists ranging from wheat breeders to molecular biologists throughout 25 states. Through this important funding, the scientists are working closely with the USDA regional high-throughput DNA fingerprinting (genotyping) laboratories. These laboratories reduce the amount of time it takes a breeder to incorporate desirable genes into new wheat varieties.

The genotyping labs are located in North Dakota, Kansas, Washington and North Carolina. These labs provide Marker Assisted Selection (MAS) technology which helped breeders accelerate their breeding program. MAS is based on the ability to mark a desirable gene and then be able to continually locate that gene as each new generation of wheat plants are being evaluated by the breeder. As each new generation is created, a wheat breeder can use the MAS technology to determine if that generation has the desirable gene. The breeder can discard plants that don’t have the desired gene, thus freeing up more space in the next years’ evaluation trials for those that do have the gene.

With MAS, a breeder simply sends a leaf sample of DNA from a certain plant to the USDA genotyping labs and they determine if it has the gene. In the traditional breeding program, a breeder would have to grow each generation out and subject it to various tests, some accurate and some not so accurate, to determine if the new wheat generation carried the gene. MAS is much quicker and more reliable than the traditional method.

To a wheat breeder, Marker Assisted Selection is as essential as a hand held GPS unit is to a snowmobile guide leading the way through thousands of islands on Lake of the Woods at night with a snowstorm blowing 30 miles an hour. Without the waypoints on the GPS unit, the guide would only be relying on luck and a little faith to find the way home. But with the waypoints on a GPS unit, the guide can successfully navigate directly back to the lodge. The traditional wheat breeder was just like the guy without a GPS system. He counted on luck and experience to determine whether he actually had the desirable gene in the new generation of wheat. A wheat plant has over 100,000 genes and locating just a group of genes would be very difficult. But with the new MAS technology, scientists can pinpoint immediately if the new generation has the gene or group of genes they want. It saves a lot of time and the results, i.e. new varieties, should be better and be released much quicker.

The USDA-funded Wheat CAP is worthy of support from U.S. wheat growers who count on new varieties to stay competitive with other U.S. crops and with wheat producers from around the world. The Wheat CAP is a excellent opportunity for our industry to coordinate variety development work across state lines and to build resources that help wheat breeders utilize technology that can accelerate the release of improved wheat varieties.