Hybrid Winter Wheat Making It's Way to the Market

Hybrid Winter Wheat Making It's Way to the Market

Lorrie Boyer
Lorrie Boyer
Reporter
While at the recent commodity classic in Orlando, Florida, I had a chance to visit with John Rich who is a wheat breeder for Syngenta company. He says that he is working on bringing hybrid wheat to market wheat that produces well in stressful environments.

“We are currently in development of hybrid wheat.”

“For winter we were about two years away from launch

rich explains how the hybrid process works in corn is considered

to cross-pollinate proper wheat to sell. So what we have to do with it on the weak side, because we have to have a male and female so we're working on we have females that are sterile, and we out cross that with a male.”

The hybrid wheat is planted just like normal wheat and a pipeline or dealer network is currently being developed to grow and sell the final hybrid winter wheat seed. Syngenta will be planting some of the hybrid seed in limited areas of North Dakota this year for research purposes. Rich says he expects a 10 to 15% yield increase along with sustainability benefits such as water and nitrogen use efficiency. He says that the end-use qualities for consumers are also still being evaluated. And according to company information. The hybrids are double patent meaning both male and female parents are protected. So growers should plan to buy new seed every year. price per unit for the hybrid wheat has not been determined as each Syngenta wheat seed associate will set their own prices.

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