New tools are required by farmers to deal with changing climates. Having grown up on a Merino stud and worked in the cotton industry, Tim Green is well aware of this need.
“Climate change is going to be the number one issue facing Australian agriculture in the coming years, and without proactive research into mitigating the risks associated with this, we’re going to fall behind global food demands,” Mr Green says.
After completing a degree in science at Charles Sturt University and majoring in plant science, microbiology and immunology (and then honours in wheat pathology at the Australian National University), he gained experience as a cotton pathologist. But now his focus is on a new challenge – a 100-day wheat adapted to the changing Australian climate.
“After several conversations over a year ago with Dr Greg Rebetzke from CSIRO, who has been developing these shorter lines, I saw this research area as a fantastic opportunity for me to not only return to the wheat industry but also to study something unique and potentially pivotal for the industry,” Mr Green says.
A 100-day wheat would be suited to future conditions in southern Australia, capable of being sown mid-winter then progressing through its life cycle in a far quicker time than current varieties, and yet still producing near-equivalent yields.
“Benefits include reduced risk in changing climates, for example enabling late sowing breaks and avoiding frost, potential for double-knocking herbicide resistant weeds, and greater flexibility in varietal adaptation with increasingly larger sowing programs.”
With these benefits, it is expected that later-sowing varietal options with cold tolerance could contribute to greater profitability.
I am not aiming to breed shorter-duration wheats per se in this project, but rather to conduct preliminary investigation into identifying traits essential for improving the performance and reliability of a wheat variety like this.
Mr Green’s study is being supervised by Dr Felicity Harris (NSW Department of Primary Industries), Dr Rebetzke, Dr Daniel Mullan (InterGrain) and Dr Sergio Moroni and Professor Jim Pratley (both Charles Sturt University). It is supported by a GRDC Research Scholarship and an Australian Government Research Training Program award as delivered by Charles Sturt University.
InterGrain is also supporting Mr Green spending time with the company’s breeders in Western Australia, illustrating the importance of collaborative capacity building within Australian grain businesses.
Experiments have been sown in Wagga Wagga in collaboration with Dr Harris and NSW DPI, and high early vigour lines have been provided by Dr Rebetzke and Dr Mullan. These experiments will investigate how new breeding lines perform against current varieties when sown late, as well as allowing for important characteristics to be identified. The results from the experiments will inform the direction of the rest of the project in terms of identifying the specific lines or traits that will be studied in greater depth.
The experiments will include unreleased high early vigour lines, several Chinese accessions, the variety Sunset – a historic variety bred by William Farrer – and Apogee, an extremely short life cycle variety developed by NASA and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station for use on space stations. A component of the experiments will be to evaluate some of the extremely diverse characteristics of fast-cycling wheats.
Mr Green is open to change, as reflected by his career so far: “Every year since completing my undergraduate degree has found me in a different or changed role within the research community. I’m cautious about crystal balling where I’ll end up, but for now am thrilled to enjoy the experience of my PhD and the skills, learnings and people I’m meeting along the way. I’ll worry about the future when it arrives!”
Tim Green, 0477 497 114, tigreen@csu.edu.au, @TGreen_001