Wheat is the most frequently cultivated crop and second only to rice in terms of human consumption, with global harvests in the neighborhood of 750 million tonnes.
Scientists believe that wheat’s “untapped genetic potential” may be utilized to double global production.
By employing current techniques such as speed breeding and gene editing, the worldwide team behind the new research believes it will be possible to create wheat types that are optimal for each region in which they are farmed.
Different types of wheat absorb water, sunshine, and nutrients in various ways, depending on their DNA. The scientists hypothesize that wheat cultivars with an optimum genome would produce a greater grain yield per acre.
The study, coordinated by Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom, analyzed existing data to determine how different genes contribute to specific plant characteristics such as “size, shape, metabolism, and growth.”
They used millions of simulations to build the optimal wheat plants for their respective locations. In all cases, a comparison with regionally adapted cultivars revealed that existing wheat varieties underperformed in terms of grain output.
Dr. Mikhail Semenov, one of the study’s co-authors, stated, “Current wheat cultivars are, on average, only producing half of the yields they are capable of due to genetic incompatibilities with local wheat growing conditions.
“By genetically enhancing local wheat cultivars, the worldwide wheat yield may be doubled without increasing the global wheat acreage,” he noted.
Improving this “genetic yield gap” will help feed the world’s rising population and minimize the need to convert natural ecosystems to farming, according to Dr. Nimai Senapati, co-leader of the study.
Wheat has been cultivated by humans for millennia, and its cultivation has had a profound effect on our species; agriculture is generally considered the first revolutionary step in human civilization, as it led to the formation of communities and the growth of social structures.
Wheat is currently the most frequently cultivated crop in the world, second only to rice in terms of human consumption, with global harvests in the neighborhood of 750 million tonnes.
The new study published in the journal Nature Food examines 53 wheat-growing locations in 33 countries, including the entire global wheat-growing ecosystem.
The team began by calculating the potential yield of 28 frequently cultivated wheat cultivars at each of these locations, assuming optimal growing circumstances existed.
This resulted in vastly different yields, ranging from less than four tonnes per hectare in Australia and Kazakhstan to 14 tonnes per hectare in New Zealand.
However, they were enhanced by substituting the indigenous cultivars with wheat kinds that favored specific qualities, such as “resistance and responsiveness to drought and heat shocks, the size and orientation of the upper leaves that capture light, and the timing of important life cycle events.”
According to the study, by optimizing these important features, the global average genetic yield difference may be reduced by 51 percent, resulting in a doubling of global wheat production.
“It should come as no surprise that countries with the lowest current yields will benefit most from reducing their genetic yield gaps,” stated Dr. Senapati.
However, even improvements in countries with a medium genetic yield gap of 40 to 50 percent, but with a large proportion of global wheat harvest areas, such as the leading wheat producers India, Russia, China, the United States, Canada, and Pakistan, would have a significant impact on global wheat production due to the larger wheat cultivation areas involved.
Before this study, it was unknown, according to the researchers, how significant the genetic yield disparities were on a national and worldwide scale.
According to the authors, this concept of a genetic yield gap contrasts with the existing and more traditional view of a yield gap, which compares harvests to how they could have performed under optimal management “due to factors such as pests or diseases, lack of nutrients, or sowing or harvesting at the wrong time.”
Dr. Semenov stated, “Our study implies that genetic yield gaps due to sub-optimal genetic adaptation could be as substantial in relative terms as the traditional yield gap due to faulty crop and soil management.”
“Wheat was originally domesticated approximately 11,000 years ago, yet despite this – and the sequencing of its full genome in 2018 – the crop is still not at its ‘genetic best,'” he continued.
