Published by Farmers Guide, June 2009

Syngenta’s new wheat is the best-yielding
bread-making variety

The glasshouses at Syngenta Seeds’ Whittlesford site provide ideal wheat growing conditions all year round.	Gallant started as a single plant growing in a jar like this.

SEEDS supplier Syngenta has continued its impressive return to the HGCA’s 2009/10 Recommended List for winter wheat with the launch of a top-class bread-making variety.
Gallant has not only gained Nabim group 1 approval in its first year of recommendation – something that’s almost unheard of – but it is also the highest yielding group 1 variety on the list with a UK treated yield of 103.
Speaking at the launch of the new variety, the head of UK cereals for Syngenta Seeds, Robert Hiles, said Gallant was further proof of the company’s decision to return to conventional breeding.
“In the late 1980s we moved to a hybrid breeding policy, but it proved unsuccessful,” he said. “That policy was reversed and the first sign of progress was the launch of the group 4 variety Duxford in 2008, now we are firmly back into the bread-making market as well.”
Mr Hiles said that Gallant gave growers access to the traditionally higher prices paid for bread-making wheat, yet it also offered a yield comparable with many feed wheats.
“The UK treated yield figure of 103% of control varieties – equating to 10.6t/ha – puts Gallant in the realms of many feed varieties,” he said. “Conventional wisdom suggests that you have to accept a lower yield if you grow a bread-making wheat, but that could be about to change. Gallant not only has the highest UK treated yield of all the Nabim group 1 varieties on the HGCA Recommended list, it also has a higher yield than half the group 4 feed varieties.
“In the past five ears, group1 milling wheat has traded at an average price premium of about £18/t,” Mr Hiles added. “For growers that can achieve a premium, Gallant looks a very attractive option.”

Consistent results
Syngenta Seeds cereals specialist Samantha Smith said that the fact that Gallant had gone straight onto the Recommended List as a group 1 variety should give growers added confidence to milling wheat growers.
“It’s worth pointing out that Gallant’s appearance on the list is the result of consistent performance in three climatically very different years,” she said. “Our tests in seasons 2006, 2007 and 2008 showed the variety’s Hagberg Falling Number consistently averaged more than 250. This is an important minimum threshold often used by millers to ensure that dough isn’t too sticky.
“At the same time, the mean protein content – an important factor for loaf volume – remained higher then the 13% threshold frequently demanded y millers.”
Ms Smith added that these results were from seven trials each season, only half of which were actually grown with the aim of achieving a milling-quality crop.
“If they had all been grown for quality, I’d expect the results to be even better,” she said.
While the potential was good for obtaining a price premium, Ms Smith said Gallant was also a practical variety for growers in the field. In particular, it showed very early ripening.
“If you think back to wet summers like last year, then early maturity can be crucial,” she said. “It can make the difference between harvesting the crop safely to protect quality before the rain comes, or it still being out in the field.
“On top of that, Gallant has good standing power among the group 1 varieties, for added protection of yield and quality, plus it has a balanced resistance profile against the major fungal diseases. It can also be drilled relatively early, from the first week of September onwards.”
About 5,500t of seed is expected to be available this autumn, which would give the variety a market share of 2-3% of next year’s harvest. Syngenta hopes the variety will achieve as much as 10% of plantings in 2010.
When they are large enough, the culture-grown winter wheat plants are transferred to compost and spend about two months in a cold store with limited light to achieve vernalisation. This process allows enough time for tissue samples to be taken from each plant and the samples to be checked for the genetic markers that the breeders are looking for.

Breeding process shortens time to market
GALLANT was produced by crossing Malacca with Charger and recrossing the result with Xi19. As complicated a process as this is, it has been speeded up considerably at Syngenta Seeds’ Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire, plant breeding centre by the use of double-haploid plant production.
Pure line breeding using self fertilisation is the traditional method for selection and creation of new plant varieties, but multiple rounds of self-fertilisation are needed to achieve full homozygosity and this represents one of the major constraints in establishing pure line varieties and parental lines in hybrid crops.
Double-haploid plants, obtained by doubling the number of chromosomes of a given haploid plant, have the advantage of achieving 100% homozygosity in a single step. Double-haploid processes, therefore, allow a considerable simplification of the pathway to reach this state, dramatically shortening genetic improvement cycles in comparison to pedigree or bulk selection methods.
At Syngenta, it is estimated that the double-haploid process halves the time to bring a variety to market, and it’s not the only high-tech step used by the plant breeders. Every plant bound for the company’s glass houses has a tissue sample taken during its two-month vernalisation stage in a cold store. Every sample is then analysed for genetic make-up so that plants that don’t carry the necessary genes for traits that the plant breeders want can be eliminated.