Wheat, often called the staff of life and one of the staple foods of the world, could be transformed in a few years with the arrival in the U.S. of hybrid strains, says Agriculture.com. The seed and chemical company Syngenta plans to begin sales of wheat hybrids in 2019 and 2020 to U.S. growers and then move on to other nations. Syngenta says its hybrids are not genetically engineered, so the path to regulatory approval is shorter. Agriculture.com quotes Geoff Townshend, a Syngenta project manager, as saying hybrid wheat will produce higher yields, partly due to a better root system, and less year-to-year variation in production.
Earlier this year, Bayer CropScience said its first wheat hybrids would be ready around 2020, according to the Omaha (Neb) World-Herald. DuPont Pioneer said last month that a research station in Windfall, Indiana, will work on developing hybrid wheat, reports Farm Futures.
Wheat hybrids are created through the same process of cross-breeding two lines that produced hybrid corn in the 1930s, says the website Hybrid Wheat. It says some wheat hybrids produce 15 percent higher yields. The seed is expensive but the sowing rate is half that of conventional wheat. In Europe, hybrid seed is produced only in France, it says. Soft wheat hybrids are more tolerant of stress and the grains are heavier than traditional lines.
In the United States, wheat is the third-most-widely-planted crop, behind corn and soybeans. It is the predominant crop in the Plains but is grown from coast to coast. More than 56 million acres were planted to wheat this year and yielded 2.1 billion bushels. Corn and soybeans have gained in popularity in the past couple of decades partly because of higher yields and greater profit potential.