Wheat School: Could winter durum reduce fusarium risk?

by

Winter durum wheat isn’t grown in Western Canada, but the possible benefits have breeders working on developing it.

As Jamie Larsen with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge discusses in this Wheat School episode, winter durum could perform well during dry years, and face reduced fusarium head blight (FHB) risk compared with spring durum.

“We are really starting to build a cold tolerance. As parents we are using winter bread wheat sourced from a western Canadian winter wheat breeding program, so ones that existed in Saskatchewan at the U of S, but then also in Lethbridge. We are also trying to incorporate fusarium head blight resistance into the material. That’s one of the major challenges”, explains Larsen. “In spring durum right now, the idea behind winter durum right now, is if we can build the cold tolerance is it can provide another high value crop that may avoid some of the fusarium head blight risks just by flowering earlier.”

As he notes, they’re focusing on FHB and stripe rust resistance.

“What we’ve noticed with the lines we’ve brought in is typically there is some resistance to stripe rust, but they do get it. One of the calling cards for spring durum is that it is stripe rust resistant. So we are trying to incorporate that,” notes Larsen.

He adds that as they continue to build their winter durum breeding program they are going to work on other diseases such as leaf rust, stem rust, bunt, and leaf spot resistance.

To learn more about winter durum breeding, and how it flourishes in a very wet, then dry year like the prairies have seen in 2017, check out our latest Wheat School episode:

Related: Wheat School: Making a Case for Perennial Wheat

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Subscribe to our daily newsletters to keep you up-to-date with our latest coverage every morning.

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Other Episodes

Wheat School (view all)Season 8 (2017) Episode 5
Episodes:

Please register to read and comment.

Privacy Preference Center

Necessary

Necessary cookies help make a website usable by enabling basic functions like page navigation and access to secure areas of the website. The website cannot function properly without these cookies.

gdpr, __cfduid, PHPSESSID, wordpress_test_cookie, woocommerce_items_in_cart, woocommerce_cart_hash, wp_woocommerce_session, wordpress_logged_in, wordpress_sec, wp-settings, wp-settings-time, __cf_mob_redir, wordpress_cache, realag
__cfduid

Marketing

Measuring interactions with the ads on the domain.

__gads,fsk_ut_2317
IDE

Statistics

These are used to track user interaction and detect potential problems. These help us improve our services by providing analytical data on how users use this site.

_ga,_gid,_gat,_cb,_chartbeat2,_chartbeat4
_ga,_gid
metrics_token

Preferences

Preference cookies enable the website to remember information that changes the way the website behaves or looks, like your preferred language or the region that you are in.

chartdefaults, comment_author, comment_author_email, comment_author_url
JSESSIONID, _os_session,anonymous_votes,csrf-param,csrf-token,user,user-id,user-platform,intercom-session,intercom-lou,intercom-session
personalization_id, tfw_exp

 

Register for a RealAgriculture account to manage your Shortcut menu instead of the default.

Register