NEW and improved varieties of wheat that will help to feed the world were promised by scientists after the staple foods genetic code was read for the first time by a British team.
The achievement will transform plant breeders’ ability to develop hardier and higher-yielding strains of wheat, leading to greater food security and lower prices, researchers said.
Insights from the genome sequence of bread wheat will identify genes that control critical traits such as drought and salt tolerance, disease resistance and grain production, which can then be bred more easily into new varieties.
The research will also assist the development of genetically modified wheat, which remains one of the few important crops to which biotechnology has yet to be applied.
Such genetic improvements could help to meet a global demand for wheat – a staple crop second in importance only to rice – that is forecast to reach 851 million tonnes (837 million tons) by 2030.
Current production is about 650 million tonnes, and poor harvests contributed to prices more than doubling to more than $US400 ($451) a tonne in 2008.
The heatwave this summer in Russia and Ukraine is expected to cause further shortages next year, and Sir John Beddington, the government’s chief scientific advisor, warned recently that the world was facing a “perfect storm” of food shortages in the coming decades.
Anthony Hall, of the University of Liverpool, a leader of the research team, said: “It is predicted that within the next 40 years world food production will need to be increased by 50 per cent. Developing new, low-input, high-yielding varieties of wheat will be fundamental to meeting these goals.
“Using this new DNA data we will identify variation in gene networks involved in important agricultural traits such as disease resistance, drought tolerance and yield.”
Be the first to comment