The assortment of wheat types grown at in these plots at Innovation Farm is part of a Defra LINK project exploring a novel way to maximise the value of the diversity in wheat populations. Within the genetic diversity contained in these plots there is an increased ability to buffer against disease and other stresses.
Adaptive Wheat LINK aims to improve the stability and performance of winter wheat under increasingly variable environmental conditions using winter wheat ‘composite cross populations’ (CCP). A CCP is created by two-way crosses between, in this case, 20 varieties. Over time this population will continue to cross and has the potential to adapt to local environmental conditions. This is being compared to the equivalent mix of the same 20 species.
CCP populations have the potential to demonstrate lower coefficients of variation for grain yield compared to varietal monocultures. This suggests that the highly diverse wheat populations have the potential to be more stable and buffer against environmental fluctuations.
When used by farmers, if the seed is retained and re-sown, those plants that have fared well will contribute more to next season’s seed than those with poor performance. By sowing and re-sowing the CCP year after year a farmer will therefore slowly build a wheat crop that is more and more adapted to the local farm conditions; in effect this is using natural selection to ‘breed’ a modern and bespoke landrace variety.
The Wheat Breeding LINK project (LK0999 – Adaptive winter wheat populations: development, genetic characterisation and application) is sponsored by Defra.
