Hybrid wheat; the next best thing short of GMO?
Farm and Ranch July 25, 2011 Syngenta is aiming to have hybrid wheat available for U.S. producers by the end of this decade. Paul Morano, head of Cereals Key Account Management for Syngenta says that without a genetically modified platform for wheat the company feels that hybrids are the next best way to get to some of the end results the wheat industry needs today. Morano: “And that is higher yield, more consistent quality and more consistent yield to the producer and it allows us to take advantage of a lot of the native traits in wheat and it is a better platform to get their than just traditional wheat breeding.” In the past the cost of hybrid wheat seed production made the seed price exceed the benefit’s a farmer could get from buying and planting it. Murano says new technologies like genetic markers and double haploids are among the factors that today can reduce seed production costs. Syngenta has also learned from the success of a hybrid feed barley it released in Europe a few years ago. Morano: “Ninety percent of what they learned in the barley we are able to transfer to the wheat.” Morano says they are perfecting the hybridization process and then they will determine what traits, non-gmo traits, they should have that farmers want. Farmers would have to buy new hybrid seed every year. If they retain and sow the seed from the hybrid plants the yields will drop significantly. I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net. ?
