Seed advances bring hybridized wheat

By Pamela Smith

Hybrid wheat has been hovering like a promise for most of Mark Birdsall's farming career. The benefits of combining strong parents to make a more vigorous progeny has long been recognized in commodities such as corn. However, hybrid wheat has remained difficult to produce on a commercial scale because of its genetic complexity.

Those fortunes appear to be changing for farmers such as Birdsall, who farms and operates a seed business near Berthold, North Dakota.

This year, Syngenta Seeds will offer limited acreage of F1 spring wheat hybrids to Northern Plains growers. Associated seed growers are expected to plant from 5,000 to 7,000 acres in anticipation of a commercial launch in 2024 under Syngenta's AgriPro brand.

Other seed companies such as BASF, Bayer, Corteva Agriscience and Limagrain Cereal Seeds are also in the race to bring hybrids to market with timelines that range between mid- to late decade or beyond.

Birdsall has been planting experimental AgriPro hybrids for the past few years. So far, he's noticed slight yield benefits and more robust plants. But, what has him excited is the fact that genetic improvements might come at a faster pace in hybrids compared to varietals, which often take generations and years of development.

"These first hybrids are just on the cusp of what is to come," he believes. Yield stability, nitrogen-use efficiency, fungicide reductions and the ability of hybrids to outcompete grassy weeds are a few of the benefits hybrids could deliver if the concept gains firm ground.

WHAT TOOK SO LONG?

Wheat is a self-pollinated crop with three complex genomes. Changing it to a system that allows pollen flow between male and females was, and still is, challenging. Genetic markers and other genetic tools allow tweaks that weren't conceivable decades ago, said Stephen Baenziger, professor emeritus of agronomy and horticulture at the University of Nebraska, who specialized in plant breeding and wheat cultivar development.

"Some really clever plant breeders were able to make successful hybrids through trial and error," said Baenziger, recalling the early history. However, they were costly to produce and didn't have what he calls "the multiplier effect" realized in hybrid corn, for example. Wheat is seeded at much higher rates than corn, and seed companies couldn't spread production costs out over as many acres.

Farmers immediately saw the benefits of corn hybrids and never looked back. "In wheat, there was never that distancing between hybrids and varieties. A wheat hybrid costs a lot to produce, and new and improved varieties kept coming to close the gap. It meant farmers could always buy cheap seed," Baenziger explained.

While farmers buy a lot more wheat seed than they once did, some bin-run seed lingers on the landscape. "Investment and interest in development wanes when commodities get cheap, too," he added.

NEXT STEPS

While excitement about hybrid wheat has germinated again, wheat hybrids are still in their infancy.

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