A salt-tolerant wheat, produced by crossing Westonia wheat with a wild relative, called seabarley grass, is having its first year of field trials at a site near Lake Grace.

 

Future Farm Industries Co-operative Research Centre research director Mike Ewing said increased demands to grow food using scarce water resources meant farmers wanted to make all parts of their land as productive as possible.

 

"Salt and waterlogged-tolerant wheat could open up land previously considered as having low productivity value - which is the case in many parts of WA," Dr Ewing said.

 

Headed by Tim Colmer from the University of WA, the salt-tolerant wheat breeding program is run in collaboration with Rafiq Islam, from the University of Adelaide, who has crossed wheat with a tolerant wild relative, sea barleygrass.

 

Seabarley grass has a high degree of salt and waterlogging tolerance and would be known to WA farmers as the barley grass that grows on saline areas and is responsible for those grass seeds in the wool and in their socks. Encouraging results in the greenhouse from the crossbreeds produced, known as amphiploids, has seen the project move to test salinity and waterlogging tolerances in the field this season.

 

Dr Ewing said the resulting grain was not of high enough quality to be milled into flour but could be used as a feed source for livestock.

 

This was a point emphasised by Department of Agriculture and Food principal research officer Ed Barrett-Lennard, who is also involved in the project.

 

Dr Barrett-Lennard said this initial trial in the field was about testing where the wheat's niche was in the landscape.

 

The field trial is growing the salt-tolerant wheat on a salt gradient in the landscape from low to high levels of soil salinity; it is also comparing the salt wheat's performance to its Westonia parents and a breeder's line of barley (CM72), considered to be salt tolerant.

 

Researchers say their salt-tolerant wheat is still at least four-five years away from commercialisation.