b'What have we learned about the wheatWhat do you look for when breeding a midge lifecycle? modern midge tolerant wheat variety?We need about 25 millimetres of rainWe look at lines that have a well-through May to kickstart these over- rounded agronomy, disease resist-wintering cocoons to start developingance and quality package for the into larvae. Theyll shed their cocoonsCWRS class of wheat. From there, and they move up close to the sur- a few lines get into the registration Tyler Wist face, and then they pupate, beforeSantosh Kumar trials which are tested for three years Field Cropbecoming adult flies. The same rainsWheat breeder under the Prairie Grain Development Entomologist that get your spring wheat up out ofAAFC BrandonCommittee guidelines. When the lines AAFC Saskatoonthe ground also get wheat midge upResearch anddo pass the required criteria, they Research andand out of the ground. Theyre reallyDevelopmentare then registered as midge toler-Developmentwell synchronized with the headingCentre ant varieties. The success of a vari-Centre stage. August thunderstorms causeSantosh hasety depends on three major criteria: Tyler studiesthe larvae to drop to the ground andpublished in areaseconomics, disease resistance and integrated pestthen they overwinter again to comeof plant physiology,quality. management ofout next year, or to lay dormant untilmolecular biology, orange wheatconditions are right.genetics andHigher yield should be achieved with-blossom midge. genomics.out sacrificing protein content. From Anything new coming down the pipe inthe disease side of things, we look at terms of battling wheat midge? the five priority one diseases: fusar-We have another gene that wereium head blight (FHB), stem rust, leaf looking at that could confer midgerust stripe rust and common bunt. tolerance in addition to Sm1. Another focus of this project is to developUnder quality objectives, we look at spring wheat lines that carry thethe milling, dough properties and hairy glume trait, an awned traitbaking attributes of the grains. and the Sm1 trait, to use their poten-tial mechanical deterrence in additionWe want all of these traits in one vari-to the single source of midge resist- ety, and that is what plant breeding ance to mitigate wheat midge prob- is all about: bringing everything into lems and evaluate the effectivenessone package so that the farmers have against wheat midge. the best of the best. Were also looking at something called oviposition deterrence, which seems to have a more complicated genetic background than Sm1. Oviposition deterrence is a techni-cal way of describing plant features that help reduce egg-laying of wheat midge females on the spikes of par-ticular breeding lines and varieties. The recent development of wheat cultivars with both sources of resist-ance provides an ideal system to test the effects of gene pyramiding on wheat midge damage and population densities. To view our full webinar on this topic, visit germination.ca/mtwSUPPORTED BY: ENDORSED BY:36GERMINATION.CASEPTEMBER 2021'