It was 1874 when a large influx of immigrants from Russia settled in the Great Plains bringing with them a hard red variety of wheat.
This wheat variety grew well in the harsh summers and dry winters.
Hard red winter wheat is still a common sight on the Plains — most especially Kansas — which came to be known as the “breadbasket of the world.” Yet, while Kansas is still a top wheat-producing state, wheat acres have been shrinking. That’s also been true in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas since the 1980s, as drier conditions and competition from other crops made wheat less attractive to farmers.
But scientists think developing wheat hybrids could usher in a new era.
Developing a hybrid
Wheat hasn’t changed much since it was first brought over to the U.S. Researchers and farmers have worked to improve other crops, such as corn and soybeans, but wheat has proved more difficult.
Agronomist Logan Simon is among scientists working to create hybrids. Most days he tends to his test plots used to experiment with corn, cotton and wheat in western Kansas.
“It gives us some greater optimism as we move into a potentially drier future,” Simon said of the research.
Hybrids usually take good traits from different varieties of a crop and combine them to make a plant that’s healthier, hardier or produces more, even in harsh environments, by carefully selecting traits from parent plants, creating a new variety.
Hybrid varieties could lead to bread with more fiber, healthier livestock herds or biofuels that produce less carbon emissions. And new varieties are becoming increasingly crucial as climate change produces challenging environments for farmers on the Plains.
OTHER CROPS like corn and soybeans have a lot of investment from private companies compared to wheat, making their scientific gains unmatched.
Farmers have had innovations in corn hybrids since the 1930s. Soybeans followed shortly in the 1940s. Since corn was hybridized, farmers’ yields have increased about 700%, going from 26 bushels per acre to 183 bushels.
But even with the advent of fertilizers and pesticides, wheat has barely doubled its yields in that same time.
With corn, creating a hybrid is as simple as cutting off the tassel at the top, which produces pollen, and planting it with another variety to cross the two. Frels said destasseling corn was a first job for a lot of Midwestern kids.
But wheat pollinates itself, which has made creating hybrid varieties a lot more challenging.
Indiana-based Corteva is a global agriculture company that recently announced a breakthrough with its wheat hybrids.
