 
Transforming cereals and farming industries.
Wheat, barley and oats are the three cereals crops on which South Australia's dryland farming industries
are based. Their farm gate value is over $1 billion with over 80% exported and the rest substantially
value-added. University of Adelaide plant breeders, Dr Tony Rathjen, Mr Gil Hollamby, Dr David Sparrow
and Professor Andy Barr, have collectively bred, developed and commercialised varieties of wheat and
barley that occupy over 90% of the South Australian area sown, over 70% of Victoria, 50% of southern
New South Wales and 10% of Western Australia.
To date the University of Adelaide breeding program has been primarily responsible for the release
of 27 bread wheat varieties, 3 durum wheat varieties and more than 11 barley varieties. The combined
efforts this group of plant breeders have contributed to yield increases, reduction in crop disease,
cereals better adapted to Australia's fragile and infertile soils, and delivered grains better suited
to the demands of both domestic and international markets. The importance of the team's work has been
recognised with the inaugural Premier's
Science Excellence Award for "Excellence in Research for Commercial Outcomes."
The University of Adelaide's current multi-disciplinary cereal breeding programs involve staff from
the University's School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, Australian
Grain Technologies Pty Ltd and the South Australian Research
and Development Institute (SARDI) based at the University's Waite and Roseworthy Campuses. The current
work of the breeding team is heavily based on work conducted during the 1960s on the early development
of specialised machinery and world-first computing programs which enabled the seeding and harvesting
of tens of thousands of plots in farm conditions. This enabled selection pressure on adaptation traits
and the subsequent identification of individual aspects including tolerance to toxicity and very high
pH in subsoils.
The release of adapted varieties resistant to Cereal Cyst Nematode (CCN) is probably the most economically
important achievement of the cereal breeding programs. With the assistance of several colleagues, the
breeding team developed selection techniques and then discovered and incorporated genetic resistances
into many widely popular wheat varieties. This, together with the CCN resistant barleys, transformed
the agricultural landscape from the sparse yellowish crops of the late 1970's to the lush vigorous crops
of today.
Our breeders identification of boron tolerance in the wheat variety Halberd, in conjunction
with other colleagues, and its transfer into wheat varieties with better end-use quality and disease
resistance presented better grain yield in dry conditions. This ground breaking work also provided for
the intellectual framework for the study of abiotic stresses in cereals, and the basis for the successful
applications for the Australian Centre for Plant Functional
Genomics and the CRC for Molecular Plant Breeding.
In 2002, the company Australian Grain Technologies Pty Ltd was established by the University of Adelaide
and SARDI to build on their combined expertise in market-focused grain breeding, and ensure our cereal
breeders continue to make a difference to the nation's grain industries.
For more information see Plant
Biotechnology and Genetics.
|
