Salt Tolerant Cereal (FP12)

The Salt Tolerant Cereal project follows on from research conducted by the former CRC Salinity to develop a feed quality cereal for salt-affected land by building further germplasm for the possible commercialisation of H. marinum-wheat amphiploids. It will also provide new knowledge on the salt and waterlogging tolerances of these materials under field and laboratory conditions.

Objectives:

• Complete production of H. marinum-wheat amphiploids with some long-season dual purpose winter wheat
• Test H. marinum-wheat amphiploids (spring and winter types Australian cultivars) for tolerance to waterlogging, salinity, and these stresses combined
• Transfer the best amphiploids (two spring wheats, one winter wheat) back to a wheat cytoplasm (Australian cultivars) to restore fertility and select chromosome addition lines in the commercial wheat background for possible future development of recombinant lines as potential pre-breeding materials for future milling-quality wheats).

Activities

The production of new amphiploids with long-season dual-purpose wheats has been successful and has been distributed to UWA and CSIRO for physiological testing. Physiological results to date from CSIRO show the amphiploids possess superior salt tolerance. In general, the amphiploids tested delivered about a 50 percent reduction in sodium ion uptake into leaves, compared with their wheat parents.

The reduction in sodium ion uptake and an even more impressive maintenance of adequate K:Na ratios appears to have a profound impact on decreasing leaf death under salinity, particularly the older leaves, for the amphiploids relative to wheat parents. These glasshouse results have been confirmed for one amphiploid in the field. In a saline paddock near Pingaring, comparisons of one amphiploid (H90-Westonia) with its wheat parent and barley (CM72) showed the amphiploid and barley were superior during establishment and in final biomass, to wheat.

Experiments at UWA have confirmed the superior germination of the amphiploid at 400 mM NaCl in pots. Work at UWA has also confirmed lower leaf death in H90-Westonia, both under drained and waterlogged saline conditions. Progress has also been made with the cytogenetical work. A key objective of the current cytogenetical work is to select a full amphiploid in a wheat cytoplasm. The approach requires two crosses and cytological screening of progeny.

For more information, email project leader, Dr Tim Colmer.