Div Of Ag Wheat Breeder One Of 15 Seeking Genetic Secrets To High-Yield Wheat

Jan 30, 2017

By Emily Thompson

Producing enough wheat to keep up with a growing global population has been a constant struggle for farmers and a challenge to wheat breeders. A University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture professor has joined the International Wheat Yield Partnership, a global program zeroing in on the genes that regulate wheat yield.

Esten Mason, Division of Agriculture wheat breeder, is one of 15 breeders collaborating with the University of California, Davis, to identify the genes that impact wheat yield. The partnership was made possible through a $9.7 million grant funded through the National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

Mason said that breeders have known for a long time where these genes are located, but they were never able to identify them.

“The technology has never been there to easily identify and utilize them, which has been a hindrance to genetic improvement of wheat yield,” said Mason.

However, that’s changed.

Using knock-out mutants of wheat developed at the University of California, Davis, advances in genome editing and a nearly completed wheat genome sequence, Mason will be able to study the functions of different genes and identify those that most affect wheat yield.

Sixty-five percent of wheat varieties are still produced in the public sector at university breeding programs. Mason said joint projects like this one enable breeders to come together and share research.

“These collaborative projects have a huge impact on the success of public breeding programs which impact the success of wheat growers,” said Mason.

Mason’s research will be based on previous studies conducted in his lab and will focus on a gene they have identified to have an effect on the number of kernels produced on a wheat spike.

Along with the need for increased wheat production, comes the need for new plant breeders.

“One of the major goals in the project is to train 15 Ph.D. students in next generation plant breeding,” said Mason.

The students will be cloning the genes, studying their functions, and putting them into new wheat varieties.

Impact on farmers

For a farmer to break even in Arkansas, an average of 60 bushels of wheat an acre must be produced. The statewide average is 55 bushels an acre, said Mason.

After the yield genes have been identified, breeders hope to deploy them to increase wheat yield. Targeted gene deployment like this has been used for years in disease resistance breeding and for other inherited traits. Wheat grain yield is a complex trait, which makes it more difficult to improve.

“It is an ambitious project, but the ultimate goal is to increase yield and make wheat more productive and profitable,” said Mason.

Source: uaex.edu

Video: Spring 2026 weather outlook for Wisconsin; What an early-arriving El Niño could mean

Northeast Wisconsin is a small corner of the world, but our weather is still affected by what happens across the globe.

That includes in the equatorial Pacific, where changes between El Niño and La Niña play a role in the weather here -- and boy, have there been some abrupt changes as of late.

El Niño and La Niña are the two phases of what is collectively known as the El Niño Southern Oscillation, or ENSO for short. These are the swings back and forth from unusually warm to unusually cold sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean along the equator.

Since this past September, we have been in a weak La Niña, which means water temperatures near the Eastern Pacific equator have been cooler than usual. That's where we're at right now.

Even last fall, the long-term outlook suggested a return to neutral conditions by spring and potentially El Niño conditions by summer.

But there are some signs this may be happening faster than usual, which could accelerate the onset of El Niño.

Over the last few weeks, unusually strong bursts of westerly winds farther west in the Pacific -- where sea surface temperatures are warmer than average -- have been observed. There is a chance that this could accelerate the warming of those eastern Pacific waters and potentially push us into El Niño sooner than usual.

If we do enter El Nino by spring -- which we'll define as the period of March, April and May -- there are some long-term correlations with our weather here in Northeast Wisconsin.

Looking at a map of anomalously warm weather, most of the upper Great Lakes doesn't show a strong correlation, but in general, the northern tiers of the United States do tend to lean to that direction.

The stronger correlation is with precipitation. El Niño conditions in spring have historically come with a higher risk of very dry weather over that time frame, so this will definitely be a transition we'll have to watch closely as we move out of winter.