SYDNEY: A new salt tolerant durum wheat was bred for the first time by Australian scientists, the University of Adelaide said on Monday. The grains yield 25 percent in saline soils, the report suggested. The scientists introduced a salt-tolerant gene from a wheat relative into a commercial variety of durum wheat using traditional breeding methods in first-of-its-kind research that may boost food security, the university wrote in a statement on its website today. Increased salt levels have degraded 20 percent of the world's farm land and are a “particular” problem in the main wheat-growing regions of Australia, the world's second-largest exporter of the grain, according to the university. Irrigation and evaporation can cause salt build up. “This work is significant as salinity already affects over 20 percent of the world's agricultural soils, and salinity poses an increasing threat to food production,” Rana Munns, co-lead author of the research and a scientist with Australia's national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, was cited as saying in the statement. Domestication and breeding have reduced genetic diversity of modern wheat, leaving the grain more vulnerable to environmental stress including high salt levels in soil. The scientists discovered the salt-tolerance gene in Triticum monococcum, or einkorn wheat, one of the earliest cultivated forms of wheat. “Salty soils are a major problem because if sodium starts to build up in the leaves it will affect important processes such as photosynthesis, which is critical to the plant's success,” said Matthew Gilliham, the senior author of a paper on the research published in the journal Nature Biotechnology. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/dnlcV Tags: Australia, Salt, Scientists, Wheat Section: Food, Going Green, Latest News, Oceana
