WA's Grain Biotech's eyes up a vintage wheat crop

First there was golden rice, a genetically modified variant of the world's number two cereal, designed to prevent blindness and ill health in an estimated 400 million malnourished people in Asia and Africa, whose monotonous diet of rice leaves them vulnerable to blindness and ill health.

Now Western Australian company Grain Biotech Australia has engineered an experimental wheat, the world's number one cereal crop, that could help by keeping over-nourished Westerners in the pink of health.

Grain Biotech CEO Dr Ian Edwards says his company has developed an experimental GM wheat whose pink-hued grain contains resveratrol, the near magical antioxidant in red wine that protects French bon vivants against cardiovascular disease despite a high-fat diet.

In 1999 Grain Biotech researchers were among the first in the world to successfully transform wheat, the most recalcitrant of the 'big three' cereal crops. The first transgenic rice and maize varieties were developed a decade ago, and GM maize already constitutes a significant part of the total US maize production.

Grain Biotech researchers employed a 'gene gun' to fire DNA-coated microparticles through the tough walls of wheat embryos -- wheat still remains difficult to transform by Agrobacterium tumifaciens, the most versatile gene vector for plant engineering.

The company has already developed three different GM wheat varieties expressing novel, potentially valuable new traits.

A second experimental GM wheat variety contains a transgene for salt tolerance, while Grain Biotech has also developed the world's first wheat variety containing a unique resistance gene against the perennial nemesis of cereal crops, barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV). GBA has patented the technology.

The company is also working on introducing a gene for an anti-obesity factor into wheat. The 'slim wheat' project is aimed at the livestock feed market; the benefit to human health would be via changes in the composition of the meat in animals fed on the wheat.

Mindful of controversies

Edwards says that, mindful of the controversies swirling around GM crops in Australia, the UK and Europe, the company has chosen projects offering obvious benefits to human health and to the environment, and with potential global markets.

Grain Biotech is Australia's leading private wheat-breeding company. Edwards says that, given the current climate of community concern about GM crops, its commercial focus is still conventionally bred, non-GM varieties that it hopes will ensure corporate profitability and also generate funds for research and development of new GM wheats.

He believes gene technology is already having a major impact on conventional wheat breeding, by allowing breeders to use molecular markers to rapidly identify breeding lines carrying genes contributing to important production and quality traits. There is also "enormous potential" to utilise the new synthetic-hexaploid bread wheat varieties developed by crossing the wild diploid species donor of the D-genome, Aegilops squarrosum, to the tetraploid genome of durum wheats.

Grain Biotech released its first four new conventional wheat varieties this year, three of them with triple rust resistance, including resistance to a new race of wheat stripe rust (Puccinia striiformis) that has recently emerged in WA. Two varieties will be marketed in southern Queensland and NSW.

Also under development are new soft wheats carrying various null combinations of the three granule bound starch synthase (GBSS) genes that modify starch composition; a 'triple-waxy'" combination is currently being evaluated, while single and double waxy lines are expected to be used to make superior udon noodles for the Japanese market.

A 'double-waxy' variety appears to be superior to existing wheat starch and other thickening agents used in cooking and processed foods, says Edwards. Another variety is being developed for the expanding market for frozen bread dough by retaining superior stability during freeze-thaw cycles.

These conventional, high-value varieties should provide an income stream for the grower-funded company to be profitable and continue to pursue its research into the next generation of GM varieties.

"With the difficult climate surrounding GM crops in Australia, it's going to be some time before we get significant returns on our biotechnology investment," Edwards said. "But we expect to be making profits from our conventional wheat breeding program within the next two years, and our strategy is to keep them both moving forward.

"It's unfortunate that Australia has a national biotechnology strategy in place, and the world's most stringent regulatory system, yet when companies jump all the regulatory hurdles, the states are now seeking to impose moratoriums that have no basis in science, but involve certain perceived marketing issues. Even with GM canola, there is no evidence that there are real marketing issues outside of the European Community, or human-health issues.

"The classic case is Canada, which has increased its canola exports by 30 per cent since the advent of GM canola, and has increased penetration by 5 per cent into the most discriminating market in the world -- Japan.

"The Japanese import between five and seven times more canola from Canada than they do from Australia, and Canada doesn't segregate GM and non-GM canolas. They're satisfied that the oil component entering the human food chain is non-GM, and after oil extraction, they feed the resulting GM meal to livestock.

"We just have to take a long-term view -- we believe good technology will find global markets. Globally, farmers are growing more than 60 million hectares of GM crops this year, and the technology uptake is continuing at a steady, rapid rate. We're confident that in five years, the picture will be very different, even amongst the more sceptical countries."

Edwards says the company feels that China and the US currently are more attractive countries in which to field-test its GM wheats, because of Australia's stringent regulatory environment and anti-GM sentiment, including the current state moratoriums on GM canola. One of Grain Biotech's overseas partners is very keen to test the BYDV-resistant GM wheat.

Broader constituency

Despite the WA moratorium on commercial production of GM canola and other GM crops, Grain Biotech recently applied to the Office of the Gene Technology Regulator to field-test Australia's first GM wheat with true commercial potential in Corrigin Shire -- an experimental salt-tolerant variety.

"We've been working very closely with the shire's growers, and with local Landmark agronomists, keeping them informed. We're trying to make it very open and inclusive, so we can get a broader constituency involved in what we're trying to achieve," Edwards says.

The GM wheat lines have several novel salt tolerance genes, including a gene from Arabidopsis that, under laboratory conditions, allows plants to thrive at a 200-micromole concentration of sodium chloride -- around 40 per cent of the concentration of seawater.

Because it is funded by farmers, GrainBiotech aims to be responsive to problems identified by farmers - and salt-contaminated soils are the major problem constraining production in the WA wheat belt, says Edwards.

He says Grain Biotech targeted salt because it didn't see much grower enthusiasm another GM herbicide-tolerant crop. Rotating herbicide-tolerant GM wheats with GM canolas tolerant to the same glyphosate and glufosinate ammonium herbicides would only accelerate the emergence of resistance in weeds and provide a weed problem through regrowth of the preceding crop.

Edwards says around 4.5 million hectares of the WA wheat belt is at risk from salinity. By a conservative estimate, salt-tolerant wheats could bring an extra 1.5 million hectares of land into production.

Many farmers avoid planting lightly-salted areas where wheat will still grow, because productivity is marginal. Salt-tolerant wheats could also bring these lands back into production.

"It's not just a WA problem -- globally, salt-tolerance is an extremely important trait," he says. "Australia's problem is dryland salinity, but wherever irrigated wheat is grown in the world, it results in an increase in soil salinity.

"There's another potential advantage with our salt-tolerant GM wheat -- along with salt tolerance, the gene is also expected to give us an extra 4 to 5 degrees of frost tolerance, and many areas of the Australian wheat belt see light frosts."

Edwards cautions that salt-tolerant wheats are no magic bullet -- while they perform well at constant levels of exposure in the laboratory, it is not clear how they will perform under field conditions, where rain and soil conditions cause fluctuating salt concentrations in the soil. This is why proof-of-concept under field conditions is so vital, he says.

The soil salt problem will require a combination of measures -- salt-tolerant wheat varieties, drainage of low-lying areas, and tree-planting to lower water tables.

He says one potential advantage of Grain Biotech's salt-tolerant wheat is that it sequesters salt, rather than excluding it from its roots, so by removing and baling the wheat straw and feeding it to cattle, farmers may avoid the expense involved in providing salt licks to their animals, while removing salt from their soils.