Perennial wheat: a review of environmental and agronomic prospects for development in Australia

Abstract

Perennial wheat could improve grain production systems in Australia by rectifying many environmental problems such as hydrological imbalance, nutrient losses, soil erosion, and declining soil carbon and soil health. There are also potential direct production benefits from reduced external inputs, providing extra grazing for livestock in mixed farming systems, as well as benefits for whole-farm management which may offset lower grain yields. In addition to universal issues of domestication and breeding of perennial wheat, specific challenges for perennial wheat in Australia’s dryland systems will include tolerance of water deficit and poor soil environments, and the risks of hosting foliar pathogens over summer. Temperate perennial forage grasses could indicate the potential distribution and traits required in perennial wheat adapted to more arid environments (e.g. summer dormancy). Several Australian native and exotic perennial relatives of wheat could also provide sources of disease resistance, and tolerance of soil acidity, drought, salinity and waterlogging. Still, several farming systems could accommodate perennial wheat with inconsistent persistence in some environments. While developing perennial wheat will be challenging, there is significant opportunity in Australia for perennial wheat to diversify current cropping options. The risks may be minimised by staged investment and interim products with some immediate applications could be produced along the way.

Genomes, Chromosomes and Genes of the Wheatgrass Genus Thinopyrum: the Value of their Transfer into Wheat for Gains in Cytogenomic Knowledge and Sustainable Breeding

“…Charpentier 1992;Jauhar 1995;Zhang et al 1996a, b;Chen et al 1998;Fedak et al 2000;Fedak and Han 2005;Oliver et al 2006;Li et al 2008;Sepsi et al 2008). These often possess several appealing attributes for wheat breeding, including perennial growth habit (Tsitsin 1965;Jauhar 1995;Cox et al 2002;Bell et al 2010); they also represented valuable starting material for the isolation of single alien chromosome addition and substitution lines into the wheat background, enabling genome and homoeologous group attribution of the specific Thinopyrum chromosome, besides that chromosomal assignment of genes of interest (e.g. Forster et al 1987;Charpentier 1992;Friebe et al 1992;Zhang et al 1992;Larkin et al 1995;Chen et al 1999).…”

Brachypodium sylvaticum, a Model for Perennial Grasses: Transformation and Inbred Line Development

“…Several groups are already working toward this goal ( [9,10,11,12,13]; www.landinstitute.org). If successfully developed, perennial grains would have many of the same benefits as perennial forage and biomass crops outlined above (e.g.…”

Use of functional traits to identify Australian forage grasses, legumes and shrubs for domestication and use in pastoral areas under a changing climate

“…There is renewed interest in the domestication of native legumes for forage purposes as well as potential grain crops Hughes et al 2008;Ryan et al 2008;Bell et al 2010Bell et al , 2012. We will deal only with the forage species in this review.…”