Australian researchers have developed a new method to identify drought-resilient wheat quickly, cheaply and accurately.
Work by the scientists from The Australian National University (ANU), ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, and CSIRO Agriculture and Food could help breeders develop more drought-resilient crops that can produce more food and more profit with less water.
“Our work may be instrumental for farmers to maximize food production in the face of increasingly severe drought,” said Arun Yadav from the Research School of Biology and ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at ANU.
Yadav and the other lead researcher Adam Carroll said selecting wheat that can grow better during short- to medium-term drought is vital to help fight food insecurity around the world.
“Hardy crop plants that can maintain high yields under drought will help farmers produce more food reliably and maintain domestic and export markets for Australia,” Yadav said. “Drought is a major agricultural challenge in Australia, affecting food production, farmers’ livelihoods and costing the government billions of dollars in relief efforts.”
The simple test measured the relative abundance of four amino acids in wheat plants to predict their ability to maintain yield under drought much more accurately than current methods, Carroll said.
“This test can be done precisely in greenhouses all year round, at a fraction of the cost of traditional field-based methods,” he said. “Plus, it gives more accurate predictions.”
Professor Barry Pogson, a 2019 Eureka Prize winner and deputy director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at ANU, was also a member of the research team.
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