Good News for Grain Farmers
A major scientific breakthrough is set to increase wheat yields for grain farmers.
British scientists have managed to map the wheat genome, revealing 95 per cent of all wheat genes.
The hope is that it will help farmers across the world increase their wheat crops to meet growing global demand.
The research could also be the key to developing wheat that is drought or salt resistant and is better quality, allowing a significant increase to production in the UK.
Until now, the genome sequence of wheat remained a mystery, however rice and maize sequences are already known, resulting in yields in advance of demand for these crops.
But for wheat there still remains a gap between supply and demand. Is it hoped that the data can now be used to develop new varieties of wheat, which is the most widely-sown crop in the UK.
According to reports, higher-yielding varieties will start to be developed during next growing season and could be commercially available within the next five to ten years, with longer-term plans to develop genetically-modified wheat varieties using the new genome map.
These scientific techniques which hope to deliver increases in crop yields provide a viable solution to future issues such as climate change, that can affect the supply of wheat.
