March has been a busy and exciting month for the wheat breeding team. In the laboratory, Cindy has now finished generating our quality and baking information and our PhD student, Nick Fradgley, has calculated the genomic predictions.
In the field, Graham has begun the trial inputs such as the first nitrogen application and herbicides. Graham is managing a variable nitrogen trial in order to gain an insight into how our advanced breeding lines are affected by reduced fertiliser inputs.
In the greenhouse I have almost finished crossing – I enjoy this time of year where I muse over each parental combination and how successful it will become. As well as some standard elite varietal crosses, we are also introgressing wild relatives, drought tolerance markers and novel sources of resistance. Be patient, these should be in your fields by 2033!
