Funding plea to get to the root of wheat infertility

FARMERS have been urged to lobby the Scottish Government to continue funding research into infertility in winter wheat.

For Scottish farmers with land good enough, winter wheat has been a fairly safe bet in the 40 years since it first became a significant crop in this country.

However, this week, cereal experts expressed their worries over crop infertility, a trait that can affect yield and occasionally appears in wheat grown in Scotland.

David Cranstoun, formerly head cereal expert at the Scottish Agricultural College and now chairing the crop evaluation committee of the Home Grown Cereals Authority, said infertility in wheat was now a real worry.

Infertility, where the flower head does not produce the all-important seed, occurs in all varieties.

In its severe state, the problem occurs only intermittently and some varieties are more prone than others to it. Cranstoun instanced one variety that had to be taken out the recommended list of varieties because of its susceptibility to infertility.

Currently trials are taking place with three of the main breeding companies in an endeavour to get to the bottom of the problem.

But this might be hampered or even stopped if the Scottish Government withdraws its current funding for the cereals trial site in Kincardineshire.

Cranstoun asked growers to contact their MSPs to lobby for continued funding for this most northerly cereal trial site in the UK, especially as location could prove a determining factor in infertility rates.

He estimated the trial site cost only about 20,000 a year from the public purse but he said he was fearful that in the present economic climate, when every part of public spending is under scrutiny, funding support might be withdrawn.

Steve Hoad, the current cereal specialist at SAC, agreed that there was serious concern about this problem, to which there was so far no solution.

He suggested that breeding programmes for new varieties had concentrated on other attributes such as yield and disease resistance, and the problem of infertility had crept in and had not been picked up by plant breeders.

There was also the issue that all the main plant breeding stations in Europe were well south of Scotland – Hoad said it might be that some varieties were geographically "at the edge of their comfort zone".

Cranstoun suspected part of the problem might be linked to the occasional very late frost in Scotland.

The issue arose at one of the series of meetings jointly held by the HGCA and SAC.