Tatiana Dimitriadi, Strategic marketing & portfolio development manager Hybrid Wheat with BASF, EMEA made a presentation on innovative solutions for wheat selection within Seed Forum – 2021 on December 2. The expert pointed out the need to raise the yield of wheat in the world due to the expected growth of demand.
“In coming decades, the world population will grow by 2 bln of people. It will require the increase of wheat supply by more than 50%. Yield had been growing by about 3% annually from 1960s to 1980s, but this surplus declined to less than half that rate in the last 30 years. Now, we need to sustainable growth of wheat yield”, – T. Dimitriadi explained.
Apart from the population growth, the expert specified such challenges as climate changes, limitations in arable land, growing middle class that provides for high demand for calories and protein rich diet, healthy and sustainable food.
“The necessity to double wheat production efficiency requires the use of hybrids. BASF is developing Ideltis hybrid basing on the cross-pollination of two distinct parents. This incorporates genetic elements from both parents, for example different disease resistance genes, brings yield benefits, and nutrient use efficiency. This hybrid has stronger emergence, better stress adaptation, more consistent yields and quality for enhanced profitability”, – said T. Dimitriadi pointing the importance of recent advancements in the sequencing of the wheat genome for developing of this hybrid. – “New genotyping and phenotyping technology along with molecular breeding techniques are enabling commercially viable production systems for hybrid wheat”.
