Creating wheat for a warming world

The development of heat-tolerant wheat varieties is important for global food security with temperatures projected to increase due to climate change.

“Globally, wheat production is already not sustainable,” said Kulvinder Gill, professor of crop and soil sciences in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences.

To adapt to the rising temperatures, the goal of research currently conducted by Gill at WSU is to develop a more heat-resistant wheat variety. He is looking for natural resistance to higher temperatures in crops that are relatives of wheat and hopes to transfer the heat resistant property to wheat. The aim is to increase heat-tolerance as much as possible, allowing wheat to cope with higher temperatures. Gill and his colleagues expect to develop a viable heat resistant wheat variety by 2020.

“Just going through the natural variation that is available out there, we are already finding some really interesting material that is significantly more heat-tolerant than current wheat varieties,” said Gill, who holds a doctorate in genetics.

There is already a decline in global wheat production due to high temperatures, and it is expected to get worse. Current wheat varieties do not tolerate heat very well. During wheat’s flowering stage, one of the final stages of development, every increase in temperature above 82 degrees Fahrenheit results in a decrease in wheat production for famers. In Eastern Washington, when wheat flowers in June, it is not uncommon for temperatures to reach over 90 degrees; therefore farmers are already losing wheat due to high temperatures.

“With climate change, the projections show that temperatures will increase,” said Gerrit Hoogenboom, WSU professor of agrometeorology. “That means the temperature will go up, it will take less time for the plant to reach flowering, and less time to reach maturity. This means the duration of the growing season for that crop is shorter and therefore the yields also decrease.”

Gill hopes to develop and begin testing the heat-resistant variety in three years in Southeast Asia, the initial target area. Southeast Asia has a large population, where climate change is expected to have the greatest impact, and where a large quantity of wheat is grown.

“The amount of water being used, fertilizer, soil quality, and erosion can’t go on for long and that is where the highest demand for wheat is and will be,” Gill said, referring to India and China, the most highly populated countries.

Gill’s research is part of the Food for the Future program, a global food security initiative. Wheat is one of the key food crops across the globe, yet the current rate of wheat production is not sufficient for increasing demands from the growing global population. The development of a more heat-tolerant wheat variety is key to offsetting the predicted decline in wheat yield and increasing wheat yields in the future.

“The agricultural community will have to come up with heat-tolerant varieties which can stand these higher temperatures,” Hoogenboom said. “There are many opportunities to maintain the production levels we currently have, we just might not be able to use the current management practices or current wheat varieties.”