This is important news. Salinity
needs to be handled and this is an excellent approach. In the future I also
have high hopes that biochar will also allow the salinity problem to be
managed. However that solution is limited
by the long application time needed for biochar solutions that are almost
generational.
This will have application is
almost all wheat growing districts worldwide simply because wheat is a dry land
crop that grows in soils that respond to irrigation with an increase in
salinity anyway.
We mow have increased confidence
that we will not be retiring those wheat fields anytime soon.
World breakthrough on salt-tolerant wheat
by Staff Writers
A team of Australian scientists has bred salt tolerance into a variety
of durum wheat that shows improved grain yield by 25% on salty soils. Using
'non-GM' crop breeding
techniques, scientists from CSIRO Plant Industry have introduced a
salt-tolerant gene into a commercial durum wheat, with spectacular results
shown in field tests.
Researchers at the University of Adelaide's Waite Research Institute
have led the effort to understand how the gene delivers salinity tolerance to
the plants.
The research is the first of its kind in the world to fully describe
the improvement in salt tolerance of an agricultural crop - from understanding
the function of the salt-tolerant genes in the lab, to demonstrating increased
grain yields in the field.
The results are published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. The
paper's senior author is Dr Matthew Gilliham from the University's Waite
Research Institute and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology.
Lead authors are CSIRO Plant Industry scientists Dr Rana Munns and Dr Richard
James and University
of Adelaide
"This work is significant as salinity already affects over 20% of
the world's agricultural soils, and salinity poses an increasing threat
to food production
due to climate change," Dr Munns says.
Dr Gilliham says: "Salinity is a particular issue in the prime
wheat-growing areas of Australia ,
the world's second-largest wheat exporter after the United States
Domestication and breeding has narrowed the gene pool of modern wheat,
leaving it susceptible to environmental stress. Durum wheat, used for making
such food products as pasta and couscous, is particularly susceptible to soil
salinity.
However, the authors of this study realised
that wild relatives of modern-day wheat remain a significant source of genes
for a range of traits, including salinity tolerance. They discovered the new
salt-tolerant gene in an ancestral cousin of modern-day wheat, Triticum
monococcum.
"Salty soils are a major problem because if sodium starts to build
up in the leaves it will affect important processes such as photosynthesis,
which is critical to the plant's success," Dr Gilliham says.
"The salt-tolerant gene (known as TmHKT1;5-A) works by
excluding sodium from the leaves. It produces a protein that removes the sodium
from the cells lining the xylem, which are the 'pipes' plants use to move water
from their roots to their leaves," he says.
Dr James, who led the field trials, says: "While most studies only
look at performance under controlled conditions in a laboratory or greenhouse,
this is the first study to confirm that the salt-tolerant gene increases yields on
a farm with saline soils.
Field trials were conducted at a variety of sites across Australia , including a commercial farm in
northern New South Wales
"Importantly, there was no yield penalty with this gene," Dr
James says.
"Under standard conditions, the wheat containing the
salt-tolerance gene performed the same in the field as durum that did not have
the gene. But under salty conditions, it outperformed its durum wheat parent,
with increased yields of up to 25%.\
"This is very important for farmers, because it means they would
only need to plant one type of seed in a paddock that may have some salty
sections," Dr James says.
"The salt-tolerant wheat will now be used by the Australian Durum
Wheat Improvement Program (ADWIP) to assess its impact by incorporating this
into recently developed varieties as a breeding line."
Dr Munns says new varieties of salt-tolerant durum wheat could be a
commercial reality in the near future.
"Although we have used molecular techniques to characterise and
understand the salt-tolerant gene, the gene was introduced into the durum wheat
through 'non-GM' breeding processes. This means we have produced a novel durum
wheat that is not classified as transgenic, or 'GM', and can therefore be
planted without restriction," she says.
The researchers are also taking their work a step further and have now
crossed the salt-tolerance gene into bread wheat. This is currently being
assessed under field conditions.
This research is a collaborative project between
CSIRO, NSW Department of Primary Industries, University of Adelaide, the
Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the ARC Centre of
Excellence in Plant Energy Biology. It is supported by the Grains Research and
Development Corporation (GRDC) and Australian Research Council (ARC).
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