Genetics research to help WA wheat farmers

Murdoch's State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre (SABC) is the headquarters for the biotechnology research team of Grain Biotech Australia (GBA), a company specialising in both conventional breeding and cutting edge gene technology approaches to improve wheat crops.

GBA's latest project, which is to develop salt tolerant wheat, has already gathered significant support from WA farmers.

"There is a genuine need in WA for crops that can cope with saline conditions, and many farmers feel there is no solution in sight," said Biotechnology Business Manager, Dr Rob Bower.

"Salt tolerant wheat could enable farmers to continue to produce on marginally affected land while other catchment-based solutions are implemented to prevent further spread of salinity problems."

The GBA team has been testing the effectiveness of a number of genes in the SABC laboratories, following promising results of tests on the genes in laboratories in Belgium.

"There are a number of mechanisms for salt tolerance in nature, and we are finding ways to look for them and combine them," said Dr Bower.

"We have the best wheat genetic transformation capacity in Australia, and the leader of the salt tolerance project, Dr Scott McNeil, is introducing genes shown to confer salt tolerance in other plants into wheat with the aim of making salt tolerant wheat plants. "The populations are then grown hydroponically in salt water to identify lines with useful levels of salt tolerance. Salt tolerant lines will then be tested in field trials."

GBA's CEO, Dr Ian Edwards said GBA staff were very pleased about the siting of their laboratory within the SABC and the recent establishment of the company headquarters onto Murdoch campus.

"It's a mutually beneficial relationship. We gain access to their state-of-the-art equipment and can participate in the multi-disciplinary intellectual mixing pot that exists in the SABC," he said.

"By incubating small companies like GBA, Murdoch staff and students are exposed to the commercial issues of gene technology and have access to the expertise of GBA research staff."

In GBA's three-year existence, the company has already made inroads into developing wheat with disease resistance, boosted nutritional value and even investigated the possibility of using wheat as a factory for pharmaceutical products.

Dr Edwards believes biotechnology will play an essential role in maintaining the capacity of Australian farmers to remain competitive in world markets and to increase productivity in an environmentally sustainable way.