Scientists have developed heat-resistant wheat

British scientists have created wheat containing exotic DNA of wild relatives. The variety allows for 50% higher yields in hot weather than elite lines lacking these genes, World of NAN reports citing www.farminguk.com.

Decades of selective breeding have reduced wheat's ability to adapt to the planet's rapid warming. For this reason, researchers from the Earlham Institute in Norwich, U.K., conducted field trials of a new heat-tolerant wheat in Mexico with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), the portal reports.

In a two-year field trial in Mexico's Sonora Desert, scientists studied 149 lines of wheat, ranging from widely used elite lines to those that had been selectively bred to include DNA from wild relatives and native varieties from Mexico and India.

Seeds were sown later than usual to put the plants under heat stress, which is predicted to become the norm in the future as global temperatures rise.

Thus, plants with exotic DNA, produced yields 50 percent higher than wheat without that DNA. And the exotic lines performed just as well as the elite ones under normal conditions.

"We urgently need to prepare the crops we plant for the future so they can thrive in increasingly hostile climates. The key lies in the untapped genetic resources of wild relatives of wheat and native varieties," said Benedict Coombes, author of the study and a graduate student at the Earlham Institute.

Scientists can now use cutting-edge science to identify the right genetic markers. And now western researchers are already starting talks with wheat breeders.

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