Johnson City Press
FLORENCE – Year-to-year weather variability is creating challenges for wheat growers, and Clemson University researcher Rick Boyles is working to determine how to develop new wheat lines that can withstand environmental changes and produce under tough conditions.
Part of his plan includes developing a new line of soft winter wheat. But this could take years. To help move things along, Boyles, an assistant professor of plant breeding and genomics and head of the Cereal Grains Breeding and Genetics Program at Clemson’s Pee Dee Research and Education Center (REC), has received a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) to study ways to incorporate genomics into wheat development for the southeastern United States.
“In this project, we will focus on selecting wheat for broad adaptation across a range of locations and environments to provide exceptional yield potential and stability,” Boyles said. “Environments across the greater southeastern United States seem to experience more severe and fluctuating weather, which makes breeding wheat that can sustain these conditions all the more critical.”