Superwheat resilient to changing conditions

Wheat breeding over the last three hundred years or so has focused on just a few varieties and this is restricting the capacity of the plant to adapt to changing environments.

By recreating the original cross between an ancient wheat and wild grass species, that happened in the Middle East 10,000 years ago, Niab has developed a ‘superwheat’ that offers new sources of yield improvement, drought tolerance, disease resistance and input use efficiency for UK plant breeders and wheat growers.

Niab spans the crop development pipeline, with the specialist knowledge, skills and facilities required to support the improvement of agricultural and horticultural crop varieties, to evaluate their performance and quality, and to ensure these advances are transferred into on-farm practice.

Niab is one of the exhibitors in the Innovation Zone at the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Show and will be talking about superwheat.

This is part of a new initiative by the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association, which has partnered with Agri-TechE and NORMAC to showcase a variety of new approaches to farming and food production.