Innovations In Cereals

One UK wheat field in four is now down to a KWS variety, and this looks set to grow as new types continue to roll off the breeder’s fast moving production line.

With cereal varieties such as Oakley, Robigus and Saffron now at the top of many cereal growers’ planting lists, the company’s breeding team has been quick to make an impact.

“For such a young breeding company to already have achieved a 25% plus UK market share in both winter wheat and winter barley – one that looks set to grow again this autumn - speaks wonders for the business and the strength of our breeding programme,” he says.

Critical to this success has been the innovative application of new technology to conventional breeding platforms. “With many new techniques available, many with very high costs, it would be easy to spend millions of pounds without necessarily delivering real benefits to breeding programmes,” he points out.

“What we’ve done is use these new technologies to complement the plant breeder. His expertise and eye for a potential winner are critical and this is where our team is undoubtedly highly skillful.”

Traditional ‘Pedigree’ wheat breeding processes involved crossing and creation of generations in a methodical way. At each stage, lines are discarded because of unwanted characteristics such as poor disease resistance, or selected in a positive way based on field, lab or glasshouse assessments. However, using Pedigree breeding techniques it was only after seven or eight years, that sufficient pure stock could be produced for multiplication into significant quantities of seed.

Now though, techniques such as Single Seed Descent utilise growth rooms and glasshouses to force crops into two or more generations every year. Alongside this, the use of a Double Haploid System where the attempted fertilization of the wheat egg-cell with pollen of maize produces a haploid embryo that can be regenerated into green plants and grown on and multiplied in more traditional ways, shaves a further year off the breeding process.

This shortening of the breeding process has helped improve the UK’s position in the world wheat production ranks. But, as a result it now costs the best part of a £1m to bring a successful wheat or barley to market.