Jiangsu to expand growing of new wheat variety

2022-07-08 16:40:00

A team led by Gao Derong, an expert of wheat breeding at the Jiangsu Lixiahe Region Agricultural Sciences Institute, has successfully created a top-quality and high-yielding variety called Yangmai 33, which shows good resistance to scab and powdery mildew at the same time.

The wheat varieties based on Yangmai have been grown in 650 million mu of field, which increased the yield by 20 billion kilograms. The growing area of Yangmai 33 will also be actively expanded during this year's autumn sowing in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, which are prone to wheat scab.

The Yangmai 33 wheat harvested from a pilot agricultural zone in Gaoyou City in early July has completed the drying step and it has showed a good yield and high quality, said Gao.

Fusarium head blight (FHB) is currently a major economically important wheat disease in the world. This devastating disease, also known as scab, can cause serious yield loss or total crop failure.

Gao said the use of chemicals has been a common practice to control scab but the results are often not satisfying while the pesticide residue also affects the ecological environment.

The team used the Yangmai wheat cultivar for hybridization, introduced the Fhb1 gene to synergistically improve disease resistance and yield, and then released the new variety after finding the right combination of traits. Powdery mildew-resistance (Pm) gene Pm21 was also transferred into the new wheat variety, according to Gao.

An extensive testing in Yangzhou’s Jiangdu District has made Gao very confident of the variety’s disease resistance and yield performance. Study showed the average yield over a field of 120 mu (8 hectares ) in Dazhong Farm reached 742.3 kg per mu.

The growing area of Yangmai 33, which has reached the highest level of scab resistance in the world, is expected to reach 400,000 mu in this autumn and 1.5 million mu next year, said Li Aihong, director of the institute. The variety has been planted in pilot areas in Jiangsu, Anhui, Hubei and Zhejiang provinces too.