Reflections on hybrid winter wheat: lessons learned

Author: P. Stephen Baenziger 1 , Vikas Belamkar 2 , Katherine Frels 1 , Amir Ibrahim 3 , Jackie
Rudd 3 , Amanda Easterly 1 , Nicholas Garst 4 , Hannah Stoll 5 , Nichole Miller 1 , Juan Jimenez
Pardo 1 , Emre Karahan 1 , Ibrahim El-Basyoni 1 , Gerladine Opena 3 , Bhoja Basnet 6 , Jochen
Reif 7 , Freidrich Longin 8 , Jean-Benoit Sarazin 9 , and Thierry Moittie 9 .

1** Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska, USA.

2** Corteva, Fargo, USA.

3** Texas A&M AgriLife, Texas A&M University, USA.

4** Bayer Crop Science, St. Louis, USA.

5** Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics, University of Minnesota, USA.

6** CIMMYT, MX, 7 Jochen Reif, Department of Plant Breeding, IPK, Germany.

8** Friedrich Longin, Wheat Research, University of Hohenheim, Germany.

9** Asur Plant Breeding, Estrées-Saint-Denis, France.

pbaenziger1@unl.edu

Abstract

Hybrid wheat has been attempted since the 1960s, yet it is only commercially sold in Europe and Asia. In the past, hybrid wheat was also sold in the USA, Republic of South Africa, Australia. There are two main methods of making hybrid wheat, chemical hybridizing agents which are used in Europe or cytoplasmic male sterility which are used in India and was used in most of the past efforts. In areas where commercial hybrid wheat efforts have stopped, it was because the commercial heterosis (comparing the hybrid to the best available cultivar) was too small and the cost of producing hybrid seed was too high. Hence the promise of hybrid wheat has been elusive. Recently, efforts to breed hybrid wheat has increased. The increased effort is due to greatly enhanced genetic and genomic tools, the ability to harness big data for parent selection, better chemical hybridizing agents to make experimental and commercial hybrids, and a better understanding of the genetics of cytoplasmic based hybrid production systems. By combining all of these technologies, hybrid wheat breeding programs believe that they will succeed where previously they were unable to deliver greater economic returns at a reasonable price to the producers. This presentation will describe some the pitfalls and potential for hybrid wheat, as well as consider what the future of hybrid wheat could mean to global food security and for climate resiliency. Also, even if this current effort to develop commercial hybrid wheat fails what will be learned should be transformative for pureline breeding.

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Keywords: Heterosis, Triticum aestivum L., Genomics, Genomic prediction