Researchers identify genes to improve wheat frost tolerance

Farm and Ranch March 18, 2009 Wouldn't be a lot less stressful as a winter wheat grower if you didn't have to worry about winterkill. That day may be coming. With funding from USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service, scientists in California have identified the genes in wheat that are responsible for the plant's tolerance to freezing temperatures. Wheat breeder and geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky of the University of California-Davis was the leader of an international team of researchers that identified the genes and what they do. Dubcovsky: "In the frost tolerant parent they will start the acclimation process earlier. So let's say the temperature is going down and now it is going from 20 degrees to 15 degrees centigrade, the plant that is frost tolerant at that point will turn on all its genes for protection and will start creating the defenses for the coming frost. Instead in the frost-susceptible variety the defenses will not turn on at 15 degrees. The machinery will wait until the temperatures reaches 12 degrees or 10 degrees or 5 degrees to turn on the machinery, and by then it is too late. So the difference between the frost-tolerant and the frost-susceptible was how early the plant started the preparation process. So that was the discovery we made." : Dr. Kim Campbell with the Agricultural Research Service at Pullman, Washington, a project collaborator, says this research has great potential to be directly incorporated into winter wheat breeding programs where improved winter survival is a goal. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.