Roots of Progress: The Hybrid Wheat Journey Continues

By Amanda Easterly and Chabella Guzman

Wheat growers in Nebraska often wonder if hybrid wheat could lead to increased yield and new beneficial traits like those seen in corn or sorghum hybrids. Recently, hybrid wheat research has seen investment from both the public and private sector, including a recent announcement from Corteva on a breakthrough in wheat hybridization technology. While many specifics of the new technologies and approaches are not yet publicized, Corteva is not alone in creating and evaluating wheat hybrids because they may be able to improve agronomic characteristics, from yield potential to drought resistance.

Wheat hybrids have remained out of reach on a commercial scale because creating a hybrid is time-consuming and costly. 

“Wheat is a perfect and complete flower. That means that the anther — where the pollen is produced — is in the same spikelet as the stigma, whereas corn has separate tassels and silks. Wheat spikelets are very small, so methods other than physical separation to prevent self-pollination must be used,” said Amanda Easterly, research associate professor at the UNL High Plains Ag Lab. “Most of these methods are based on either genetically or chemically stopping pollen production to control the cross-pollination, and both approaches tend to be expensive.”

UNL and Texas A&M University have had winter wheat hybrid research programs in place since 2014, of which Easterly was a member during her doctoral research. UNL’s Small Grains Breeding program, now led by Dr. Katherine Frels, has been testing hybrids in Nebraska since 2016 across the state. The first results from the 2016 and 2017 tests indicated that some of the 600 experimental hybrids tested showed a yield benefit. These hybrids also showed some yield stability under stressed conditions, particularly drought and heat. An upcoming publication from the Small Grains team shows that the best hybrids are indeed more stable performers under stress than some pureline wheat cultivars.

In addition to universities, companies such as Bayer, BASF and Syngenta have also worked on hybrid wheat. Many programs were eventually shuttered or reduced due to the cost of creating and testing hybrids. A division of Monsanto, HybriTech, released a few hybrids in the Nebraska Panhandle and surrounding regions in the 1990s. They were marketed under the “Quantum” wheat brand, but the higher seed costs were a challenge for many growers. In 2023, BASF closed its hybrid wheat breeding program in North America due to similar challenges.

The success of hybrid corn is attributed to a biological phenomenon called heterosis. 

“Heterosis is a situation in which the hybrid performs better, and preferably way better, than either of the parents used to create it,” Easterly said. “Wheat breeders within a market class often work collaboratively to create new varieties, meaning that there are closer genetic relationships between wheat varieties from Nebraska and Texas or Nebraska and Kansas, and this may be a current limitation in how much heterosis we see in wheat.”

One of the more significant challenges is increasing the scale of hybrid seed production, a constraint for both research and commercialization of hybrid wheat. Being able to create and test hybrids effectively is needed to demonstrate a consistent benefit of hybrids over “traditional” wheat varieties, but then once good hybrids are developed, the amount of seed needed by interested growers grows exponentially. On the research side, Frels and her team can test three to five locations a year with as little as a pound of seed, but farmers require 50-60 pounds of seed per acre planted.

As for the Corteva breakthrough in wheat hybridization, "it will be interesting to see how their innovations impact research and the market. Hybrid wheat may also be an avenue through which other new technologies begin taking off in wheat,” Easterly said.