Canadian National Wheat Cluster: Activity 10 – Developing winter wheat varieties adapted to Ontario: A multi-disciplinary approach

Objectives:

• Winter wheat breeding line development, evaluation and variety selection.

Impacts:

• Five new soft red winter wheat varieties were released and three made it to market, namely OAC Constellation, OAC Moon, and OAC Virgo. OAC Constellation is the new agronomic and quality standard for soft red winter wheat candidate lines in registration trials in Ontario.

Project Overview:

Cereal crops are an integral part of the cropping system in Ontario, grown on approximately 25% of the arable land. Winter wheat is the most widely grown cereal in Ontario followed by spring barley, spring wheat, and oats (http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/crops/field/cereal). The University of Guelph (U of G) Wheat Breeding and Genetics Program was established in 2014 through a multi-party public-private partnership involving the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) of the U of G, Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) and SeCan. The partnership provided funding and resources to establish the Research Chair position in wheat breeding, officially known as the Grain Farmers of Ontario Professorship in Wheat Breeding. Since 2014, the program has been able to establish a complete breeding pipeline with a dynamic gene pool. Wheat breeding activities have been supported since 2018 through the Canadian Field Crop Research Alliance (CFCRA) by GFO, SeCan, and Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada (AAFC).

Wheat, and particularly the winter-grown crop, is an integral part of the otherwise dominant corn-soybean cropping systems in Ontario and in Eastern Canada, providing crop diversity, improving soil health, providing soil cover during the winter, and improving the overall nutrient use efficiency of the cropping system. However, several biotic and abiotic factors threaten the high productivity and quality of the Ontario wheat crop. Among the biotic yield-limiting factors, Fusarium head blight (FHB; caused mainly by Fusarium graminearum) has been the most damaging disease in Ontario. Moreover, powdery mildew (PM; caused by Erysiphe graminis) and the leaf spotting and rust diseases (stem, leaf, and stripe rust) have been among the important diseases of wheat in Ontario. More recently, and with the spread of new and more aggressive races of Puccinia striiformis (the stripe rust pathogen) that can tolerate higher temperatures, stripe rust has been observed in parts of Ontario with higher severities never seen before. Sub-zero temperatures during the winter and frost heaving, caused by freeze and thaw cycles early in the spring, are likely the most important abiotic yield-limiting factors.

Wheat breeding activities at the U of G aim to enhance the gene pool and develop cultivars adapted to Ontario. Progeny of crosses enter different line-development pipelines that include strategies to accelerate generation advancement and reduce the time to develop a new variety. Elite lines are evaluated in disease nurseries and multi-location-year trials for agronomic and seed quality traits. To support the development of wheat varieties with Fusarium head blight (FHB) resistance or tolerance to deoxynivalenol (DON), elite lines are screened for Fusarium damaged kernels (FDK) and resistance to DON. Genomic and molecular marker-assisted selection are done in-house at the Department of Plant Agriculture to improve selection efficiency and the rate of genetic gain and reduce the costs to develop improved cultivars. High yielding, disease-resistant candidate lines with requisite end use traits for either soft or hard red winter wheat are advanced annually to the Ontario Cereal Crops Committee (OCCC) Registration and Performance Trials. Candidate lines exhibiting merit are registered for production in Ontario, leading to wider adoption of winter wheat in the rotation of Ontario farmers.

Results:

Soft red winter wheat breeding:

Five new soft red winter wheat varieties were released and three made it to market, namely OAC Constellation, OAC Moon, and OAC Virgo (see table below). OAC Constellation is the new agronomic and quality standard for soft red winter wheat candidate lines in registration trials in Ontario.

^† Intensive management adds fungicide in addition to standard management of the trials.

OAC Constellation:

• Very high stable yields. Very well accepted by growers and producers for its high, stable yields and its consistent and predictable growth in the fields. Easy to manage, easy to combine. Good standability and grain quality has made this a very popular variety. Awned. Licensed to SeCan.

OAC Moon

• Smaller seeds and better standability vs most varieties. Moon had a clear yield potential advantage, especially with a fungicide in Area 2. Good disease resistance and high-quality grain. Awned. Some challenges with seed quality/purity. Licensed to SeCan.

OAC Virgo

• Awnless variety gives harvesting and straw advantages for growers. Typically very clean foliage through to harvest lends itself well to less intensive management practices. High yield potential for intensively managed fields. Licensed to SeCan.

Canadian winter wheat adaptation trial (CWWAT):

Genotype-by-environment interaction is an important consideration for plant breeders when selecting high yielding genotypes that perform across multiple environments. The CWWAT was conducted to examine the adaptation of 26 winter wheat lines from different breeding programs across Canada. Five locations (Elora (EA), Ottawa (OA), Tupperville (RN), ON, Lethbridge (LB), AB and Beloéil (BL), QC) were used to test the 26 genotypes over a four-year period (2019-2022). The phenotypic performance data collected included winter survival (WS), height (HGT), days to heading (HDG), test weight (TWT), and grain yield (YLD). Results revealed that variance components due to genotype, environment, and G×E interaction were highly significant (P < 0.01) for all traits except for WS, which was not significant for genotype effect (Table 1). A GGE biplot analysis was conducted to rank the relative yield performance of cultivars and to identify stable genotypes. The genotypes OAC Constellation, UGRC-Ring, and OAC Moon/OAC19−SRW−01 exhibited the highest yield, while AAC Wildfire and CDC Buteo were lower yielding in the test environments (Fig. 1). The GGE biplot analysis identified two distinct groups among the 12 test environments, with OAC Constellation performing the best in group one (EA20, OA20, OA21, OA22, EA21, EA22, CM22, RN21, RN22, OA22, BL21, BL22) and W520 performing the best in group two (BL20, LB19) (Fig. 2). The GGE biplot also ranked the 12 test environments for yield, with EA22 and BL22 being the most desirable and LB19 and BL20 being the least desirable (Fig. 3). The CWWAT results indicate that selection for performance is best conducted in environments representative of the diverse winter wheat production zones in Canada.

Table 1. Mixed model analysis of variance of 26 genotypes and 12 environment locations for phenotypic traits observed in 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022 growing seasons.

• Test Weight
• **,*** represent significant differences at p < 0.01 and 0.001, respectively

Figure 1. GGE biplot comparing 26 genotypes with the “ideal” genotype. The ideal genotype, represented by the small circle with an arrow pointing to it, is defined as having the highest yield in all environments. That is, it has the highest mean yield and is highly stable. The genotypes are ranked based on their distance from the ideal genotype.

Figure 2. GGE biplot representing the which-won-where, where the genotypes at the vertices of the polygon represent the genotypes indicated for the respective mega-environments formed (dashed lines).

Figure 3. GGE biplot comparing 12 environments evaluated according to the estimate of an ideal environment.

External Funding Partners:

Funding for this activity in the Canadian National Wheat Cluster was provided by the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada AgriScience Program through the Canadian Agricultural Partnership, with industry support from the Canadian Field Crop Research Alliance (CFCRA) members, including Grain Farmers of Ontario and SeCan.

Project Related Publications:

None.