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BY LEE HART
earlier, reducing the risk of being affected
by adverse fall weather conditions.
But when it comes to lower days-to-
maturity rates and higher yields, breeders
usually have to trade one for the other, said
Spaner. Pasteur, for example, now classed
as a Canadian Western Special Purpose va-
riety, is very high yielding but also matures
very late. Spaner faces the challenge of
developing breeding lines that both mature
early and produce high yield.
Selecting for early maturity requires
breeders to evaluate millions of plants
in different genetic lines of wheat grown
in replicated plots, and then narrow the
field. Over successive seasons, 250 lines
that show promise are chosen. Of these,
Spaner will select 15 to be evaluated in
co-op registration trials. From there, hope-
fully at least one new line will warrant
being registered.
Along with early maturity and high
yield, Spaner strives for varieties with
a well-rounded combination of other
traits—for example, good to moderate
resistance to diseases such as stripe rust,
stem rust, leaf rust and Fusarium head
blight (FHB); good lodging resistance;
and, of course, good milling qualities.
ON THE BARLEY FRONT
High yield, high quality and good re-
sistance to disease and lodging are also
among the traits Aaron Beattie selects
for in his barley-breeding program at
the CDC.
While he works with feed, forage and
some hulless barley, his main focus is
malting barley variety development. CDC
Bow, registered in 2014, is among the
newest malt barley varieties available, and
farmers will also be hearing about CDC
Fraser over the next couple of cropping
seasons as it moves through the pedigreed
seed production system.
“I’ve been receiving good feedback
from growers regarding CDC Bow,” said
Beattie. “It is a high-yielding variety with
exceptional lodging resistance. And it
should appeal to maltsters and brewers, as
it has a good quality profile.”
CDC Fraser should be a good fit for
farmers as well. It features high yield,
good lodging resistance and a good dis-
ease resistance package that includes good
tolerance to FHB, with lower levels of the
DON mycotoxin.
While the CDC hasn’t released any new
two-row feed barley varieties since CDC
Austenson hit the market in 2009, Beattie
said he does have a new line in the ad-
vanced stages of development that should
be available to farmers by the 2020/21
growing season.
“CDC Austenson itself was quite a step
forward among feed barley varieties,” said
Beattie. “And this new variety is showing
some big improvements over Austenson.”
It features higher yield, similar lodging
resistance, good protein levels and a
good disease resistance package against
pathogens such as spot blotch, net blotch
and FHB.
While Beattie uses a variety of tools
to select for higher yield, quality and
agronomic performance, one of the most
important developments in his CDC lab
was the introduction of in-house mycotox-
in screening equipment in 2016.
“Before we had this equipment, we had
to send samples to either a private or gov-
ernment lab to be tested, and often there
was a long lag time before we got results,”
he said. “We often would have seed in the
ground and growing for the new season
before we got results back from the pre-
vious year’s evaluation of those lines for
DON.” The CDC can now evaluate DON
levels in harvested seed and decide wheth-
er a line is worth pursuing before the next
research growing season begins.
To evaluate for FHB resistance, plots of
new lines are grown at an Agriculture and
Agri-Food Canada FHB nursery in Bran-
don, MB. The lines are exposed to heavy
FHB pressure and then seed samples are
evaluated to determine the level of the
DON mycotoxin in the kernels.
“We will probably never develop a varie-
ty that is completely resistant to Fusarium,
with zero levels of DON,” said Beattie.
“But we keep looking for lines that show
lower levels of DON, and those are the
ones we keep in the breeding program.
“We use many of the standard genetic
tools available today, such as molecu-
lar markers, to help us select lines for
improved production performance such as
lodging and disease resistance. But having
this equipment available to measure DON
in-house has probably been one of the
more valuable tools we can use in our
screening process today.”
Winter
2018
grainswest.com49
Dean Spaner, wheat breeder at the University of
Alberta.
Aaron Beattie, barley breeder at the Crop Develop-
ment Centre in Saskatoon, SK.
Photo:AaronBeattie
Photo:AnnePratt