Mention "biotechnology" to most Australians and chances are they will interpret the word as meaning genetic modification. Of food and animals. In some scientific conspiracy to manipulate the natural order.

That’s a pity, because the great bulk of biotechnology does not involve genetic modification.

Take "doubled haploid" technology, for instance. The name itself suggests something a bit complicated and the process actually is a bit that way.

Yet it is being used by the breeding teams responsible for maintaining the quality and market relevance of Australian wheats and barleys to slash as many as four years from the time traditionally taken to turn out a new, improved variety.

The first example of what doubled haploid technology can do for the Australian grains industry came a few weeks back, with the commercial release of the new Australian Prime Hard wheat variety EGA Hume.

Making the official release, David Hamilton, director of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries Farming Systems Institute, said the EGA Hume was a significant milestone for the Australian grain industry, being the nation’s first wheat variety produced using doubled haploid technology.

QDPI has had doubled haploid capability since the early 1990s, recently improved with the construction of a dedicated, solar, passive, low-input glasshouse. There are also laboratories at the University of Sydney, South Australia’s Research and Development Institute and Western Australia’s Department of Agriculture using the same technology.

All are involved in the national crop breeding programs supported and coordinated by Australian growers and the Federal Government through the Grains Research & Development Corporation.

Ross Gilmour, manager of the GRDC’s winter cereal improvement program, says the advantages of doubled haploid technology come after the initial cross of two chosen parent lines.

"In the generations after a cross is made, lines segregate for the characters by which the two parents differ," he says.

"In traditional wheat breeding, at least four generations of self-pollination are necessary to fix the genes so the lines breed true to type in future generations and become suitable for commercial production.

"The doubled haploid technique circumvents the need for the multiple generations of self-pollination to fix the lines.

"In wheat – the technique is a bit different for barley – the doubled haploid process involves making a cross between two parent lines, growing the seed that results from that cross and then  crossing to those plants with maize pollen.

"Crossing with maize and subsequently applying a chemical called colchicine has the effect of duplicating the chromosomes exactly, thereby fixing the genes they carry.

"The lines are fixed in the space of one generation, rather than the four or five generations required using a standard (pedigree) breeding procedure.

" The time required to develop a new variety is reduced by up to four years as a result."

Dr Gilmour says strategic use of the doubled haploid technique, in combination with molecular markers for desirable traits presents even greater opportunities to accelerate the rate of genetic progress through plant breeding.

The doubled haploid technique requires special infrastructure – growth rooms and temperature and humidity controlled glasshouses – and is labour intensive.