China's wheat breeding for high quality, high yield and water saving needs to be strengthened

“At present, China's high-quality and high-yield, water-saving wheat varieties still cannot well meet production demand.” Liu Xu, academician and vice president of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, expressed this view at the “7th National Wheat Genetics and Breeding Academic Symposium” recently held in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.

Liu Xu believes that over the past ten years China's wheat harvests have been abundant year after year, and new varieties have played an important role in increasing yields. In the main wheat-producing areas, variety replacement has generally been achieved 1~2 times, with the most prominent examples being Shandong's “Jimai 22” and Henan's “Aikang 58.” However, in recent years some prominent problems have also emerged in wheat production, placing new and higher demands on new varieties.

The problems are mainly manifested in three aspects: First, the impact of climate change is becoming increasingly obvious. For example, in 2013 northern Anhui and southern Henan experienced extreme low temperatures in mid-April, causing severe yield reductions in about 30 million mu of wheat; from late May to early June 2014, the Huang-Huai wheat region experienced continuous high temperatures of 35~38 degrees Celsius, causing severe yield reductions in Hebei and other places. Second, disease problems are becoming increasingly serious. Fusarium head blight has become the most important disease in the Huang-Huai wheat region; in 2012 the severely affected area was about 150 million mu, and in recent three years some areas of Huang-Huai have also been quite severely affected; in 2014 sheath blight occurred widely in Henan; a new stripe rust race V26 with strong pathogenicity and very rapid spread has emerged, causing the stripe rust resistance gene Yr26, widely used in China's main wheat-producing areas, and the highly anticipated Yr10 to generally lose resistance, while artificially synthesized wheat, Dasypyrum villosum translocation lines and Guinong lines have lost resistance to stripe rust; in 2015 leaf rust was quite serious in the main wheat-producing areas. The third is the problem of emphasizing yield over quality.