By Neena Bhandari
Sydney, (IANS) Indian and Australian wheat collaborators are using their skills and experiences to focus on the implementation of molecular technologies to develop improved wheat varieties for both countries.
University of Sydney’s Plant Breeding Institute is collaborating with the Directorate of Wheat Research at Karnal and Punjab Agricultural University in Ludhiana to study molecular marker technologies for faster wheat breeding in India.
Wheat production in India has been static in recent years. Production peaked in 1999 at 76.4 million tonnes. Richard Trethowan, director of the University of Sydney’s Plant Breeding Institute facility at Narrabri in New South Wales, said: “It will be vital for India to increase wheat yields as the area of land available for cropping falls, industrial and urban development increases and water for irrigation becomes limiting due to use for other crops or purposes.”
Australia leads the world in the development and adoption of molecular technologies to accelerate plant breeding.
“This project will focus on rust resistance to establish a ‘pipeline’ for the application of molecular technology in wheat cultivar development, thereby allowing future advances in molecular technology to be adopted seamlessly by wheat breeders,” added Trethowan, who is coordinating the implementation of this project. Rust is a fungus that affects wheat.
While India has the research skills and infrastructure required, including high-throughput molecular tools, it lacks information management systems and marker adoption strategies integrated into applied wheat breeding programmes.
Trethowan said: “Australia can offer expertise and experience in facilitating the cohesive linkage of the components to breeding. The implementation of marker assisted selection (MAS) will speed the delivery of superior, high yielding, rust resistant cultivars to farmers.”
The new wheat varieties with increased and more stable yield attributable to improved rust resistance will produce significant economic benefits. Rust diseases comprise an important constraint to wheat production in both Australia and India, and there is a long history of collaborative rust research between the two countries.
“By crossing Australian and Indian cultivars carrying complementary combinations of genes, identified by molecular markers, there is an opportunity to develop a unique Indo-Australian wheat germplasm of value to both countries carrying comprehensive rust resistance”, explained Trethowan.
The long-term social benefits of the project will extend to poverty alleviation, food security and improved equity within the farming community and will be realised once large-scale adoption of the new varieties occurs, probably within five to 10 years.
Trethowan said: “Visits between India and Australia will maximise transfer of technologies and systems between researchers and breeders in both countries. It is anticipated that the training and exposure of Indian scientists to new molecular techniques and methodologies will spill over to other crops and traits throughout the country.”
Wheat is a major food crop in India, grown on 26 million hectares and producing more than 72 million tonnes of grain per year. Every one percent increase in yield would add an additional 720,000 tonnes and more than $10.5 million to the value of the wheat crop at current prices.
The project will also have positive environmental consequences with greater yield from a smaller agricultural footprint and enhanced resistance to rust leading to reduced fungicide and chemical use.
Around two-thirds of Australia’s total production of wheat is currently exported. In 2006, Australia exported wheat worth $3.4 billion, which was 11.4 percent of the country’s total agricultural exports in the year and made wheat the country’s second biggest agricultural export behind beef. In the same year, Australia exported 1,347,679 tonnes of wheat to India.
Australia-India two-way bilateral trade amounted to 7.56 billion Australian dollars (about $6.8 billion) in 2006. India was Australia’s sixth-largest export market in 2006, growing by 32 percent. However, wheat and cereals were not among the top 21 exports.