A Queensland wheat breeder will spend a month in remote areas of Central Asia collecting ancient wheat-related plants that face extinction.

Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries wheat breeder John Sheppard, of the Leslie Research Centre in Toowoomba, will next week join a plant collecting expedition to Tajikistan and neighbouring regions to collect ancient crop cultivars and their wild relatives.

Mr Sheppard said the Syrian based International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) was organising the expedition as part of its role of storing plant genes for use in breeding programs that improve food production and quality in the world’s poor countries.

“This material is also available to plant breeders in any country, including Australia,” he said.

Mr Sheppard said plant breeders were gravely concerned that ancient plants carrying genes for possible use in plant breeding programs could soon be extinct because of unsustainable farming systems and environmental deterioration.

“ICARDA has organised similar expeditions to collect seed of these plants, which is the basis of their extensive gene pool for world use,” he said.

“Plant breeders are under increasing pressure to produce a steady stream of crop varieties that yield well under often difficult conditions.

“To do this, we need access of new genetic material such as that found in the ancient plants of Central Asia.

“If we don’t collect and preserve it now, it could soon be lost to the world,” he said

Mr Sheppard said he would be offsetting expedition travel costs through the 2005 GRDC Bruce McClelland Bursary he was awarded.

He said ICARDA had arranged for a film crew to accompany the expedition and record its progress and discoveries.

The expedition would last for a month from June 13 and include seven members from three countries, he said. 

He will be the only Australian plant breeder on the expedition.