Wheat in a Hot and Dry Climate

Our Mission

Enhance productivity and secure high grain quality of wheat in the hot and dry Australian climate.

Our Goals

Develop wheat with combined heat and drought tolerance by advancing existing knowledge and technologies and transferring wheat material and knowhow to breeding programmes

Elucidate mechanisms and molecular markers for combined heat and drought tolerance by exploring genetic diversity in wheat

Identify mechanisms and genetic diversity for high yielding wheat with efficient nitrogen recycling and high grain protein.

Build human capacity in molecular breeding and providing breeders access to the latest scientific developments and technologies.

Develop and test high-throughput field phenotyping tools for Australian breeders

Great work and a great cover photo from our Wheat Hub student, Vahid, published in Agronomy

Congratulations to Wheat Hub PhD student Vahid Rahimi-Eichi for making the cover of ‘Agronomy’ with his recently published paper. Vahid’s study focuses on understanding the link between grain protein content, grain production and biomass in…

Rainwater harvesting @ Waite

Wheat Hub researchers now have access to two 22,500 L rainwater tanks thanks to Research Officer Sanjiv Satija’s successful application for funding provided by the University of Adelaide’s Ecoversity program under the “Green Project Fund…

Stuart Roy features on ABC Radio’s SA Country Hour

Wheat Hub Director, A/Prof. Stuart Roy featured on the South Australian Country Hour, hosted by Isabella Pittaway. The discussion included new advances in gene editing using CRISPR technology and how this can benefit the Australian…

Super wheat in a hot and dry climate…

Director of the Wheat Hub, A/Prof. Stuart Roy, spoke with Jenny Hullick from The Advertiser recently about the environmental challenges facing wheat growers in Australia and how technological tools such as drones and x-rays are…

More news

Research Areas

Program 1: Drought and heat tolerance

The most important constraint to wheat production in Australia is water scarcity. In the last decade, Australia has suffered multi-year droughts and, based on FAO statistics, yield in 2006 dropped by 46% below… Read more.

Program 2: Germplasm development for genetic diversity

Crop improvement is dependent upon genetic diversity. The rate of genetic gain in breeding programs can increase by extending the amount or nature of variation available for selection using land races and wild… Read more.

Program 3: High throughput phenotyping tools

The development of improved varieties relies on identifying the best performing entries from a breeding population. However, high-throughput phenotyping tools beyond the plot harvester are still rare (White et al., 2012) and not… Read more.

Program 4: Linkage of yield and grain nitrogen

Introduction Nitrogen (N) is an essential macro nutrient for plants and N fertilizers have to be applied in agricultural production systems to obtain high grain yield and prevent N depletion and soil degradation.… Read more.

Program 5: Genomics for breeding

Introduction Advances in genomics and high throughput technologies have the potential to transform breeding such that desired traits can be quickly sourced from wild germplasm and integrated into elite lines. By combining the… Read more.

ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hub for
Wheat in a Hot and Dry Climate