Pre-Breeding

Prof. Richard Trethowan leads his team in enhancing germplasm for different traits, including water efficiency to cope with drought conditions, disease resistance and grain quality.
A number of initiatives will be assisting Prof. Trethowan in these endeavours which include:

• The establishment and use of Managed Environment Facilities for studies on crop water use (supported by the GRDC).
• Gene pyramiding for crown rot resistance in wheat (supported by GRDC)
• The development of a highly rust resistance Indo-Australian germplasm (supported by ACIAR)
• The exploitation of drought resistance in wild tetraploid wheat to improve the water-use-efficiency of hexaploid wheat (supported by the Generation Challenge Program)
• The use of marker assisted recurrent selection to improve the water-use-efficiency of wheat (supported by the Generation Challenge Program)
• The genetic improvement of metabolizable energy of triticale grain (Pork CRC, RIRDC and GRDC)