Australia
April 5, 2011

The world is struggling to feed itself and the bad news is that the global population is expected to grow from 6.5 billion to nine billion by 2050.

And as the population grows, so too does demand for land and energy which, together with climate change, will further hinder agriculture’s ability to produce enough food to sustain society.

The 2009 World Summit on Food Security issued a target of 70 per cent more food by 2050, an average annual increase in production of 44 million tonnes per year and a 38pc increase over historical increases in production which has to be sustained for 40 years.

It’s an unprecedented challenge which demands substantial results from agricultural scientists, in particular those in the cropping sector.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), crops comprise around 80pc of human food, with cereal crops accounting for 50pc of global food production.

Australia’s Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) is at the forefront of the challenge, working with research institutions from around the country and around the world to help breed superior cereal varieties.

GRDC Manager Germplasm Enhancement Dr Jorge Mayer said that while conventional plant breeding, better farm machinery, the use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers,precision agriculture and improved farm practices had delivered significant productivity gains, new options were needed to address to the current challenge.

“For about 40 years from the 1960s to the early 2000s, the yield increase was around one per cent a year, but for the last 10-15 years the rate of yield increase has diminished and we are not keeping pace with population growth and demand into the future,” Dr Mayer said.

“There will be a bottleneck in supply that will be really critical in terms of people accessing food as well as market prices, so we have to look at what is keeping us from obtaining the necessary gains in yield – an annual gain of 1pc or higher if possible.

“We have to look at plant genetics and the factors that are restricting crop yields here in Australia.”

In 2009-10 the GRDC invested more than $22 million in grower levies and Government funds into wheat and barley “pre-breeding” research. Outcomes of this research include lines with novel traits and trait combinations, as well as tools to select for those traits to improve a crop’s response to various diseases and environmental stresses.

“Our focus is on key traits that will make the greatest difference to Australian wheat growers, like improved tolerance to drought, frost and salinity, and disease resistance such as rust, crown rot and nematodes,” Dr Mayer said.

The results of this genetic research are then fed into commercial breeding programs, which then deliver the improved varieties to Australian farmers, with some 52 new varieties released to growers since 2005.

It is hoped these new varieties deliver higher yielding and more consistent crops, and with Australia exporting the bulk of its annual wheat crop, the strategy should also have benefits for the availability of grain globally.

As a nation the total spend on wheat pre-breeding is in excess of $80m, most of which is public sector investment, with bodies like the GRDC partnering with the CSIRO, universities and the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics among others, in pursuing its research priorities.

Internationally, the GRDC works with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Syria, and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico in sourcing and sharing genetic resources.

And the GRDC is further fostering the relationship between pre-breeding researchers and the commercial wheat breeding companies through platforms such as the Australian Winter Cereals Pre-Breeders Alliance.

“As a result of these partnerships and this investment, significant advances have been made in recent years in the quest to deliver new wheat varieties that are more drought, salt and disease tolerant,” Dr Mayer said.

“While the incremental gains made by researchers are being constantly fed into commercial programs, breeding these new and superior varieties is very much a long-term investment – the results of five years of pre-breeding require a further 10 years with a commercial breeding company before a new variety is planted in a farmers’ field.

“So we’re trying to look into the crystal ball for which problems will be still there in the future, and which problems will be impacted by evolving factors like climate change.

“We have to be strategic and pick out the major limitations and target solutions which will have the biggest impacts for the most growers.”

One of the researchers involved in wheat’s pre-breeding challenge is Professor Mark Tester, from the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide and Director of the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility.

Prof. Tester believes continued investment in new technology is vital in achieving the grains industry’s local goals, as well as international food security, arguing that the greatest gains from new advances will be enjoyed by the developing world.

The average global yield is just 3t/ha, compared to the extreme highs of up to 10t/ha in some locations. However, with the majority of land sown to wheat globally returning yields below 3t/ha, these areas offer the greatest opportunity to substantially increase global wheat production.

In a research paper published in the journal Science last year, Prof. Tester and his colleague,ACPFG chief executive officer Professor Peter Langridge stated that increasing yield by 1t/ha in a low-yielding area would deliver a “much higher relative increase than does the same increase in high-yielding environments”.

“The local social benefits of supporting farmers on low-yielding lands would also be great,” they argue in the report.

To achieve this, “new technologies must be developed to accelerate breeding through improving genotyping and phenotyping methods and by increasing the available genetic diversity in breeding germplasm”.

Dr Mayer agreed, arguing that “simply planting out lines in the field and in glasshouses is no longer enough”.

“We have been breeding for local challenges – salinity, heat, lack of water – for many years, and we have already extracted a lot of what we could through conventional breeding.
“The question now is: what do we need to do beyond conventional breeding to attain additional gains? What can we give to breeders to be more efficient?

“Breeders need a more targeted methodology to select for the genes and gene combinations and that’s where the modern technologies come in with molecular markers and research based on the increasing knowledgeof whole genome sequences.”

While many people associate talk of new plant technologies with genetic modification (GM), the concept is much broader.

For example, in recent years the understanding of complex plant traits has been bolstered by developments in statistical and modelling methods for the analysis of data obtained from field and glasshouse trials.

And phenotyping, the science of measuring a plant’s growth and function, took a giant step forward in Australia last year with the opening of the $30 million Plant Accelerator at the University of Adelaide.

The facilitywhich is partnered with the High Resolution Plant Phenomics Centre in Canberra, led by CSIRO’s Dr Bob Furbank, provides state-of-the-art plant growth environments and the latest technology in high-throughput plant imaging, which together provide for the repeated measurements of the physical attributes of plants automatically and non-destructively.

This increases the speed and scale of plant physiological measurements, hastening genetic studies being undertaken to illuminate the molecular basis of complex physiological traits.

“It’s more than just accelerating, it’s helping us do things we couldn’t do before such as looking at the plants in different wavelengths,” Prof. Tester said.“It’s accelerating our discovery of genes and plant processes.”

However, new technology still requires qualified staff to drive the research, with most countries around the world struggling to maintain strong breeding capabilities.

“Substantial increases in the education of plant breeders are essential ... A vital adjunct is the free communication of resources and capabilities from technology developers to technology users,” states the paper entitled Breeding Technologies to Increase Crop Production in a Changing World published by Tester and Langridge in Science.

Australia’s wheat pre-breeding institutions participate in information sharing programs with their international counterparts.The collaboration provides Australian researchers with genetic material from around the world otherwise not available locally, for use in breeding new Australian varieties.

In turn, their knowledge and technology is equally valuable to researchers in other parts of the globe.

Prof. Tester believes technology can in part also help resolve the problem of attracting new people to the field.

“At the moment many researchers are out there with a ruler or not very sophisticated tools and that doesn’t make for an interesting day in the field sometimes,” he said.
“Whereas if we could fly a micro-light plane over the field to get all of this information, then that would be fantastic.

“Having new sexy technology to throw at an old problem will make the field of plant breeding much more attractive to potential students.”

Dr Mayer agreed that modern technologies would help attract more young scientists to the field of plant breeding, noting that commercial breeding companies in Australia nowadays employ young breeders with a background in molecular biology and knowledge of modern gene marker techniques.

“They are representative of the new breed of plant breeders, and we need more of them if we are to succeed in meeting the globe’s ever-growing food needs,” he said.

• More information on GRDC’s investment in pre-breeding is available at www.grdc.com.au
 

Website: http://www.grdc.com.au

Published: April 5, 2011