To Collect Wheat, Oats In Ethiopia

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31440, 5 August 1967, Page 11

To Collect Wheat, Oats In Ethiopia

In the course of a three months’ overseas trip Dr. H. C. Smith, director of the Crop Research Division of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research at Lincoln, will spend two weeks in Ethiopia in October collecting as many samples of oats and wheat as possible in as many localities as he can visit.

The purpose of these collections will be to secure material that has a high degree of resistance to barley yellow dwarf virus, the main virus disease of cereal crops, which has been a problem in wheat crops in New Zealand in some seasons. I

This disease, he said, could be most economically controlled by breeding new resistant varieties but trials

had shown that all commercially grown varieties of wheat, oats and barley in this country already had a moderately high resistance to this virus, and in fact were already higher in resistance than those varieties being grown commercially in countries such as Australia, Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe. Consequently extensive testing of overseas commercial varieties had so far not produced any improved resistance to the virus that could be used to breed higher levels of resistance into New Zealand varieties.

The only crop in which very high resistance had been Identified was barley and more than 100 collections of barley, all from Ethiopia, had, under extensive tests in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, been confirmed in their extremely high resistance. Thus it was possible to breed new varieties for New Zealand conditions with a very high resistance to the virus using the collections from Ethiopia. Ethiopia was the centre of origin of cereals, said Dr. Smith, and was likely to have a wide range of types of cereals. So it was not surprising that a large number of collections of barley had been found with a high level of resistance, and it was also likely that among oats and wheat there would be also be varieties with high resistance. Dr. Smith’s visit to Ethiopia has been timed for the middle of October, as cereal crops will then be maturing. Ethiopia is also the centre of origin of clovers and while he is there he will also be collecting clovers for the Grasslands Division. Those considered likely to be most useful for breeding new varieties in New Zealand were strawberry clover and two other species resembling white clover which have a very high production. In Italy Dr. Smith will be looking for varieties of peas and beans that could be useful in breeding in New Zealand to increase resistance to pea top yellows virus, which in some seasons causes serious losses in yield in Canterbury. At the request of the vegetable research section Dr. Smith said he would be seeking as much information as he could get of the special requirements of vegetables and small fruits to facilitiate their mechanical harvesting.

In the vegetable breeding >rogramme in New Zealand, re said that they were paying close attention to the requirements of the processing industry and all peas and beans would, in their final trials in the field, be handled by mechanical harvesters. Similarly, with tomatoes it was necessary to breed varieties suitable for mechanical harvesting. Dr. Smith said that the pea and bean breeding programme at Lincoln was being expanded to cater for an anticipated increase in the export trade in processed peas and beans and in seed.

He would also be looking Into the prospects of breeding improved varieties of small fruit strawberries, raspberries and black currants—«s there could be a big potential for the export of small fruit to particularly the northern hemisphere, as this country could supply fruit in the middle of their winter. If this trade developed there could be great economic advantages in having varieties that were specially bred for New Zealand conditions. While in the United States Dr. Smith will attend the American Phytopathology conference in Beltsville, Maryland, where he will be presenting a paper on results that have been obtained in developing better methods of testing cereals for resistance to barley yellow dwarf virus. He will also be presenting evidence, first discovered in New Zealand, of the importance of numbers of aphides in the severity of barley yellow dwarf virus disease. He has also been nominated as the New Zealand representative at a symposium to be held in Rome in early October under the auspices of the Food and Agriculture Organisation on crop losses.