Experiments in controlled environments looked promising, but this new study shows the application can deliver in field conditions. Not only did T6P increase wheat yields in each of the 4 years in the trials in Argentina and in an additional year at CIMMYT in Mexico, but it did so irrespective of rainfall, the major uncontrolled abiotic factor that limits crop yields globally.
It may even be possible to reduce fertiliser applications as T6P treatment activates genes for amino acid and protein synthesis in grain as well as the pathway for starch synthesis. This is important because a major issue in new higher-yielding wheat varieties is dilution of protein content requiring increased fertiliser to maintain quality for bread making.
“The path from discovery to translation has taken 25 years,” says Rothamsted’s Dr Matthew Paul who led the research with Professor Ben Davis at The Rosalind Franklin Institute and Oxford University. “Such timeframes are not untypical in blue-skies plant research, but we do hope new technologies, such as AI and faster analytical techniques, can accelerate this process. We will need many more innovations like this to create sustainable and resilient agriculture in the coming decades. I am so grateful to my excellent people, co-workers and teams and for grants from UKRI-BBSRC which made this work possible. Getting this far has been hard work but extremely rewarding”.
Rothamsted and Oxford have created SugaROx, a spinout company, to deliver this research to farmers. Dr Cara Griffiths, lead author of the research paper and CEO of SugaROx, said, “It’s exciting to be able to take cutting-edge technology from the bench to the field. Getting this kind of impact is often difficult to translate to the field, and this work demonstrated that novel crop inputs have huge promise to enhance yield and resilience in our cropping systems, something that is particularly important in a rapidly changing climate”.
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