Development of non-GM frost-tolerant wheat for WA growers

Overall Objective

The overall aim of this project is to improve frost tolerance in an elite WA wheat variety using gene editing technology.

Project Synopsis

COGGO has partnered with researchers at Murdoch University and the WA company Green Blueprint Pty Ltd to improve the tolerance of elite WA wheat germplasm to frost, using new gene-editing technology.

Frost damage is one of the major causes for variation in WA wheat yield and quality, and affects the developing heads during flowering and early grain filling.

Although luckily in the current year (2022/3) widespread frosts have not been a major issue in the WA wheatbelt, nevertheless frost damage occurs almost every year across southern and eastern agricultural regions. Although management practices can reduce losses from milder frost events, severe widespread frosts (-2^oC or colder) can cause considerable yield losses over wide areas. The most susceptible developmental stages are during and after flowering, but frost events can also damage stems and developing grains.  Nationally, the average annual loss in yield from frost damage is estimated at about $450 million.

At present, there are no high-yielding wheat varieties with a desirable level of tolerance to frost damage available to WA farmers, and it has been difficult to provide a solution to frost damage using conventional breeding.  Management strategies to reduce losses from frost are usually employed in frost-prone areas.  These include sowing later maturity types, staggering sowing dates, mapping frost-prone areas and avoiding planting wheat in these areas, or planting more frost-tolerant alternative crops.  However, these strategies can reduce growers’ yields and profits.

Using the new approach of gene-editing, in this project with COGGO support, work is progressing to develop wheat plants which are intrinsically more tolerant to frost events. The strategy is to increase the level of anti-frost proteins which are naturally present in wheat.  To date, the research team has generated a number of gene-edited wheat plants, with up to a seventeen-fold increase in the expression level of an anti-frost protein at some stages of development compared with the original germplasm.  The seeds from these plants are being bulked for further analyses, including measuring anti-frost protein levels at all developmental stages up to grain-filling.

It is expected that wheat with better frost-tolerance will reduce or eliminate losses from frost events.  Growers will then have more control of when and where to  plant, and less need for other  frost mitigation strategies.  In turn this will help reduce yield variation and increase profitability.