Researchers to Improve Wheat Tolerance to Heat Using CRISPR

Jul 23, 2024

A research team at South Dakota State University (SDSU) led by Professor Wanlong Li is set to modify the genetic code of wheat plants using gene editing to make them more tolerant to heat stress.

To grow wheat, the ideal temperatures according to NASA, vary between 70F and 75F, but some varieties, like winter wheat, can grow in temperatures as low as 40F. However, when temperatures exceed 90F, heat stress can cause significant yield loss, and this is a growing concern as the Great Plains of North America, also called the "wheat basket of the world" is predicted to see more frequent heat waves and higher average summer temperatures in the face of a changing climate.

Heat tolerant wheat varieties are needed, but developing heat tolerance in wheat is hindered by complicated genetics mechanisms.

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Video: From Students to Solutions | On The Brink: Season 2, Episode 14

Ask Canada’s most decorated soybean breeder his favourite part of the job and he doesn’t name a single variety. He names the students.

Istvan Rajcan is a professor of soybean breeding and genetics in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph, where he has run the soybean breeding program for 28 and a half years. In that time he has developed 87 soybean cultivars, published 140 refereed papers and trained 51 graduate students. In 2025 he received the Public Sector Impact Award from the National Association for Plant Breeding.

He is also worried. In this episode he says Canada is at a crossroads, pointing to recent government cuts to plant breeding programs and to the facilities that support them. His prescription is structural. "Plant breeding funding formula has to be a long-term one," he says.

The formula he is defending is the public-private matching arrangement his program runs on. Private seed companies fund the work, provincial or federal money matches it, and the combined pool stretches each dollar further than either source could alone. At the National Association for Plant Breeding annual meeting in June, he says American public breeders were often surprised at how well that collaboration works in Canada.

He also describes how the people entering plant breeding have changed. His early graduate students came mostly from farms. More recently they include, in his words, "city kids who just became excited about genetics."

Topics covered:

Why public-private plant breeding funding in Canada needs a long-term

commitment rather than a larger one

How matching private seed company investment with provincial and federal

dollars multiplies research capacity

How the graduate student pipeline into plant breeding has shifted from

farm kids to city kids