Western Australia
March 27, 2008
InterGrain, the new West
Australian wheat breeding company, has made an immediate impact
in the market by the release of two outstanding new varieties,
the high yielding Australian Premium White (APW) variety Magenta
and the premium quality udon noodle grade variety Yandanooka.
Both are expected to have major market impact in WA and, in the
case of Magenta, also in South Australia and Victoria.
The Department of
Agriculture and Food, Western Australia (DAFWA) Wheat
Breeding Program, which has consistently provided 80 – 90 per
cent of varieties grown by WA farmers in the last decade, has
transformed into the company InterGrain.
The new enterprise is the corporate product of a long-term
partnership between DAFWA and the
Grains Research and Development
Corporation (GRDC).
The recently passed Biosecurity and Agricultural Management Act,
enables the state government and the GRDC, the previous owners
of InterGrain’s intellectual property (IP), to continue as
shareholders in wheat breeding.
According to Dale Baker, InterGrain’s Chairman, the formation of
the company is in keeping with changing times in the wheat
breeding industry.
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Intergrain wheat
breeders Robin Wilson and Chris Moore with
Magenta |
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“There is a trend in Australia for
wheat breeding to be run as a business, rather than as a state
government or university program. This move relates to the
concept of competitive neutrality, where government resources
may not be used to compete with commercial enterprise.”
“Until the early 1990s wheat breeding in Australia was through
publicly funded programs and then in 1994 the passing of the
Plant Breeders Rights Act allowed breeders to claim End Point
Royalties. This payment, essentially for intellectual property
rights, has enabled wheat breeding to become commercial,” Mr
Baker said.
“We anticipate that the corporate model will introduce
efficiency and relationships that will enable us to do a better
job. It runs on business parameters, rather than public service
parameters and makes it easy to deal with other players in the
private sector.
“InterGrain is majority owned and funded by the WA taxpayer and
the economic benefits return to this state,” he said.
At his InterGrain office on the DAFWA campus in South Perth, CEO
Keith Alcock is clear about the reasons for the high performance
of the program’s varieties in WA.
“The WA climate differs from that of the eastern states, except
perhaps the Eyre Peninsula, because across most of the wheatbelt
we have terminal drought and a rapid finish to the season,” he
said.
“This means wheat bred for the longer seasons under east coast
conditions run into problems at the finish, either with yield
falling away or with high levels of screenings.
“Our varieties perform against this challenge and we know one
big factor why they perform – it’s because of the high level of
stem-stored carbohydrates.”
“When DAFWA Principal Research Officer, Dr Tim Setter and his
Plant Physiology team measure the levels in our varieties and in
our breeding material, they are finding them to be the highest
in the world.
“We actively select for this using assays, because in drought
environments it is the reserve sugars in the stem which are
mobilized at the end of the season to finish crop ripening,” he
said.
Robin Wilson, Senior Wheat Breeder at InterGrain, says that the
major drivers in producing a new variety of wheat are yield,
disease resistance and quality.
He has been involved with developing many WA wheat varieties,
including Magenta.
Magenta and Yandanooka, developed by Dr Iain Barclay, are the
first ‘progeny’ of InterGrain.
Mr Wilson says Yandanooka is a mid-season udon noodle variety,
with good quality and yield, maturing between the two widely
grown udon noodle wheats, Arrino and Calingiri.
It has improved resistance for all three rust diseases, compared
to Calingiri and Arrino.
Magenta is a high yielding, disease resistant variety of APW
wheat, with a number of advantages over the popular Wyalkatchem,
including better stem and leaf rust resistance.
“It has the most complete resistance to the rusts and leaf
spotting diseases of any variety currently available in WA,” Mr
Wilson said.
Intergrain Wheat Breeder, Dr Iain Barclay, stresses that a
particular strength of InterGrain’s program is that wheat
varieties are bred to cope with the stressful environment in WA.
“We also look for parental material which will perform in
different and even hostile soil conditions, such as acid,
alkaline, saline, micronutrient deficient, waterlogged and boron
or aluminium toxic soil,” he said.
“We are looking to incorporate traits such as high intrinsic
yield, disease resistance and micronutrient efficiency.”
According to Dr Barclay, research has given breeders many tools
to accelerate the breeding process.
Molecular biology has led to an understanding of the genes which
respond to environmental stressors and markers for genes allow
breeders to directly manipulate genes for a better understanding
of the drivers.
Keith Alcock affirms that in the modern world, successful wheat
breeding is a blend of science and market awareness.
“A lot of energy goes into determining what it is that overseas
markets want,” he said.
At present WA produces 40 per cent of Australia’s wheat and 95
per cent of that is sold overseas, mostly to the Middle Eastern
and Asian markets.
Mr Alcock trained as a plant pathologist, and worked in
agricultural chemical research and product development. He has
made the journey from corporate to public and now back to the
private sector.
His involvement with the farming community spans many years and
he says that although the WA production environment is
“challenging”, he thinks WA has the best growers – amenable to
new technology, new varieties and best practice in every
respect.
Asked about challenges for the future, Mr Alcock said it would
be to increase wheat production through breeding by more than
the current one per cent per annum achieved in the DAFWA
program: “We need to do better than that to stay ahead of the
cost-price squeeze.”
Another challenge is herbicide resistance.
“The current level of herbicide resistance in WA is an example
of how new technologies can be over-used. WA is the herbicide
resistance capital of the world because we over-reached in
depending on selective grass killing herbicides to drive our
no-till systems.
“Hopefully, we are now turning this around and now lead the
world in integrated management of herbicide resistance.
InterGrain has a part to play building on the release of the
metribuzin-tolerant variety Eagle Rock and the
‘Clearfield’series.”
Mr Alcock emphasized that their record for quality had always
been there.
“Everything in the former DAFWA wheat breeding program, which is
almost 100 years old, has been incorporated into the new
breeding program.
“We have in the past and will in the future ensure we produce
‘super’ varieties quality-wise. We are aiming for the top of the
grade rather than also-rans.”
Mr Alcock said that InterGrain was on track to release four new
varieties in 2008, with diverse regional adaptations and
covering quality grades from noodles to hards.
Other news
from the
Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia
/
from
InterGrain |
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