Research The Bayer Scientific Magazin, Edition 28

Choosing the greatest potential: laboratory technician Claire Pons de Vincent selects the most promising wheat plants. She and her 

 colleagues at Bayer’s wheat research center in Milly-la-Fôret near Paris are developing more effective breeding methods for the cereal.

GLOBAL STRATEGIES FOR HIGH-PERFORMANCE CEREALS 

The wheat makers 

Wheat is a staple food for the majority of our world’s population. While demand for this cereal is growing rapidly, 

extreme weather  volatility and climate change present new threats to global harvests. To meet the need for  

consistent, higher yielding varieties, researchers at Bayer CropScience are working with a global network of  

breeding stations, research facilities and partner companies to develop wheat cultivars which are fit for the future. 

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Bayer research 28    July 2015

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“Wheat yields will have 

to increase dramatically 

to meet demand.”

Steve Patterson, Global Crop Manager 

Cereals at Bayer CropScience

Photos: P

eter Ginter/Bayer AG (3), Sabine Bungert/Bayer AG (1), Dirk Hansen/Bayer AG (1), Ludovic Combe/Horizon Photogr

aphie (1)

Wheat feeds the world; more than two 

billion people rely on it as a traditional ce- 

real and staple food. Its nutritious golden 

grains are used to make bread, pasta, beer, 

pizza and animal feed. Wheat is grown on 

roughly 220 million hectares worldwide 

– significantly more than other small 

grain cereals such as rye, oats and bar- 

ley. Wheat yields per hectare have more 

than doubled since the late 1960s. Yet 

they have barely risen at all in some key 

regions during the last decade – a devel-

opment that could have dramatic conse-

quences. “If things stay as they are, we 

will struggle to meet the demand of the 

growing global population,” says Steve 

Patterson, Global Crop Manager Cereals  

at Bayer CropScience. Even in tradition- 

al rice-growing countries such as China 

and Korea, wheat is becoming increasing-

ly popular. On top of this, current yield 

levels may decline, mainly as a result of 

climate change. Patterson continues, “Ex-

treme weather events such as prolonged 

periods of drought or heavy rainfall could 

cause wheat supply market shocks, and  

it is estimated that for every degree Cel-

sius that global temperatures rise, wheat 

yields could decline by 6 percent.” In ad-

dition, diseases and grass weeds that have 

become resistant to conventional crop 

protection agents are increasingly caus- 

ing harvest losses in key growing regions. 

“To secure the future of wheat, it is vital 

that we rapidly implement global mea-

sures which bring together wide-ranging 

areas of expertise and integrate them in 

new farming concepts,” says Patterson. 

To this end, Bayer has built up a global 

network of in-house breeding stations 

and external partners in just a few years. 

The company is also cooperating with the 

international Wheat Initiative, which was 

endorsed by the G20 Agricultural Minis-

ters in Paris in 2011. “Our goal is to breed 

plants which provide higher yields under 

the respective local climate and soil con-

ditions and are better able to withstand 

extreme weather, pests and diseases,” 

explains Edward Souza, Head of Wheat 

Breeding Research at Bayer CropScience. 

Scientists are working intensively to de-

velop new cultivars of this staple cereal at 

a total of seven plant breeding stations: 

in Canada, Germany, France, Ukraine, 

Australia and two stations in the United 

States. This global breeding program in-

Global cereal: wheat is grown on around 220 million hectares worldwide and is consumed in 90 countries. However, demand could  

outstrip the supply in the future. Bayer’s scientists are therefore using new technologies to specifically increase yields.

Specialists aim to breed more 

robust plants for higher yields

Wheat

  AGRICULTURE

Bayer research 28    July 2015

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volves over 400,000 test plots and 8,000 

different elite experimental varieties. 

The scientists are pursuing several 

different strategies, including the breed-

ing of more robust and high-yielding 

hybrids. “These are produced when two 

pure lines selected for quite specific traits 

are crossed with one another,” Souza ex-

plains. First-generation (F1) hybrid seed is 

particularly desirable because it produces 

significantly higher yields than the parent 

varieties. To produce such hybrids, breed-

ers have to suppress pollen formation in 

one parent line by making it sterile. “If 

this doesn’t happen, the plants self-polli-

nate and the yield-boosting effect is lost,” 

says Souza. The few programs making F1 

varieties of wheat today use chemical 

sterilants, which are however only ap-

proved for use in a few countries. Bayer 

researchers in Souza’s team have turned 

their attention to genetic sterilization to 

solve this problem, using native genes 

from wheat and closely related species. 

“We also use more conventional breed- 

ing processes to combine the desired 

traits – for instance, crossing particu- 

larly resistant wild wheat with modern, 

high-yielding varieties,” Patterson ex-

plains. The experts at Bayer are using new 

technologies which greatly accelerate  

the breeding process. “Using molecular 

markers, we can quickly identify suitable 

candidates for cross-breeding and discard 

less suitable variants at an early stage in 

the process,” explains Souza. Prior to this, 

the selection relied solely on the trained 

eye of the breeder, who had to assess the 

value of a new variety based on plant 

growth, leaves and root development. 

“We are particularly interested in iden-

tifying the genes responsible for yield and 

resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses,” 

says Dr. Catherine Feuillet, a wheat ge-

neticist who leads the Trait Research de-

partment at Bayer CropScience. Over the 

past ten years, she has devoted herself to 

a particularly daunting task: deciphering 

the wheat genome. With 17 billion base 

pairs, however, the wheat genome is five 

times larger than the human genome, and 

far more complex. Each plant cell contains 

three sets of chromosomes that contain 

multiple copies of the same information. 

“Decoding the wheat genome was long 

thought to be technically impossible or 

simply too expensive,” says Feuillet. How-

ever, progress has now been made, thanks 

largely to the International Wheat Genome 

Sequencing Consortium (IWGSC), an orga-

nization in which Feuillet holds a leading 

position and which also receives financial 

support from Bayer CropScience. “We have 

already succeeded in obtaining a reference 

sequence from the largest chromosome 

and have produced rough drafts of the 

other 20,” she says. These are useful to de-

velop markers that can be used by Souza’s 

team as well as breeders around the world, 

but complete sequence information is still 

Using information from the wheat genome sequence,  Dr. 

Catherine Feuillet and her team are working on discovering 

and improving the genes underlying yields to accelerate  

the selection and creation of improved varieties.

Scientists are working with 

some 8,000 wheat varieties 

The history of wheat

The oldest evidence of wheat dates back around 10,000 years, 

making wheat the second oldest cereal after barley. The wild 

ancestors of modern wheat, like most grasses, had very slender 

seed heads, which shattered easily and scattered the seeds on 

the ground. This made them difficult to harvest, so early farmers 

selected specimens with particularly thick seed heads and used 

them to breed varieties with ears which remained intact until 

they were threshed. 

The first cultivated species were einkorn and emmer. Initially 

grown in the Middle East, these varieties were robust, capable of 

growing even in inhospitable places and stored well. Despite its 

many advantages, however, wheat was long regarded as a niche 

product. It was not until the 11th century that the grain became 

popular. In the 1950s researchers made an important break-

through: they discovered a dwarfing gene in wild grasses  

which they crossed with domestic wheat. The new plants were 

smaller and more stable, and could carry more grains. This 

knowledge was used as part of the green revolution that led to 

a doubling of yields in many countries, including India. Today 

around 5,000 different varieties of wheat are grown around the 

world. 

Common wheat covers 90 percent of the area devoted to wheat 

growing, and is the principal component of bread and animal 

feed. It is also used to produce starch. This wheat species was 

the result of a spontaneous crossing between emmer wheat, the 

ancestor of durum wheat, and a wild goat grass. Durum wheat 

has a particularly high gluten content and is used mainly for 

pasta and noodles, as well as bulgur and couscous. Needing 

 little water and being well-suited to hot climates, it is grown 

predominantly in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East.

AGRICULTURE 

Wheat

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