Speed Breeding to Combat Wheat Disease with Drs. Nidhi Rawat and Vijay Tiwari
03/14/25 • 37 min
“Evaluation of speed breeding conditions for accelerating Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol screening in wheat” with Nidhi Rawat and Vivek Tiwari.
Fusarium head blight (FHB), also known as head scab, is one of the most significant diseases affecting wheat, causing substantial economic losses for farmers in the U.S. and worldwide. While FHB resistant wheat lines have been identified, breeding these traits into desirable cultivars is a time-consuming process that can take decades, with uncertain success. In the U.S., particularly for spring wheat, crossing of wheat lines can typically be done only once per year due to seasonal limitations, which slow down the process of development of disease-resistant cultivars. To overcome this challenge, speed breeding—an approach that involves growing plants under extended light exposure (20–22 hours per day) to accelerate their life cycle—offers a promising solution. This technique enables multiple generations of wheat to be produced within a single year, allowing for more frequent crossings and a faster transfer of disease resistance traits into desirable cultivars. In this episode, Drs. Nidhi Rawat and Vijay Tiwari share their insights on using speed breeding techniques to accelerate the breeding of disease-resistant cultivars.
Tune in to learn:
· What is Fusarium head blight?
· How does Fusarium head blight cause economic loss to farmers?
· What is speed breeding?
· How does speed breeding help in developing disease resistance cultivars?
· What are challenges in adopting speed breeding?
If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.21226
This paper is always freely available.
Contact us at [email protected] or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.
If you would like to reach out to Nidhi Rawat and Vijay K Tiwari, you can find them here: [email protected] and [email protected]
If you would like to reach out to Saptarshi Mondal from our Student Spotlight, you can find him here: [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/saptarshi.mondal.50
Resources
Transcripts: https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/NjdkMzEyNTMzMzJlNjQ3MGNjMTU5ZGEzbk9fdW1qR3NNUGpv/o/VEMwNTA5MzQxMjA1
US Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative (USWBSI): https://scabusa.org/home-page
Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
https://agnr.umd.edu/about/directory/plant-science-landscape-architecture/
Wheat labs, University of Maryland, https://umdwheatgenomics.weebly.com/
Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.
“Evaluation of speed breeding conditions for accelerating Fusarium head blight and deoxynivalenol screening in wheat” with Nidhi Rawat and Vivek Tiwari.
Fusarium head blight (FHB), also known as head scab, is one of the most significant diseases affecting wheat, causing substantial economic losses for farmers in the U.S. and worldwide. While FHB resistant wheat lines have been identified, breeding these traits into desirable cultivars is a time-consuming process that can take decades, with uncertain success. In the U.S., particularly for spring wheat, crossing of wheat lines can typically be done only once per year due to seasonal limitations, which slow down the process of development of disease-resistant cultivars. To overcome this challenge, speed breeding—an approach that involves growing plants under extended light exposure (20–22 hours per day) to accelerate their life cycle—offers a promising solution. This technique enables multiple generations of wheat to be produced within a single year, allowing for more frequent crossings and a faster transfer of disease resistance traits into desirable cultivars. In this episode, Drs. Nidhi Rawat and Vijay Tiwari share their insights on using speed breeding techniques to accelerate the breeding of disease-resistant cultivars.
Tune in to learn:
· What is Fusarium head blight?
· How does Fusarium head blight cause economic loss to farmers?
· What is speed breeding?
· How does speed breeding help in developing disease resistance cultivars?
· What are challenges in adopting speed breeding?
If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.21226
This paper is always freely available.
Contact us at [email protected] or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.
If you would like to reach out to Nidhi Rawat and Vijay K Tiwari, you can find them here: [email protected] and [email protected]
If you would like to reach out to Saptarshi Mondal from our Student Spotlight, you can find him here: [email protected] https://www.facebook.com/saptarshi.mondal.50
Resources
Transcripts: https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/NjdkMzEyNTMzMzJlNjQ3MGNjMTU5ZGEzbk9fdW1qR3NNUGpv/o/VEMwNTA5MzQxMjA1
US Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative (USWBSI): https://scabusa.org/home-page
Plant Science and Landscape Architecture, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742
https://agnr.umd.edu/about/directory/plant-science-landscape-architecture/
Wheat labs, University of Maryland, https://umdwheatgenomics.weebly.com/
Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.
Previous Episode
Economics of Autonomous Strip-Cropping with Professor James Lowenberg-DeBoer
“Economics of strip cropping with autonomous machines” with James Lowenberg-DeBoer.
With the growing global population, the demand for food continues to rise. However, increasing food production often depends on intensive farming practices and agricultural inputs that can negatively impact environmental health. To counter this, promoting crop diversity, improving soil health, and reducing disease and pest pressure are crucial. Mixed cropping presents a viable solution but poses challenges for mechanization and labor efficiency. In this context, customized autonomous machines and advanced technology can play a key role in facilitating mixed cropping while lowering production costs. In this episode, Dr. James Lowenberg-DeBoer shares insights from his research on the economics of strip cropping—the simplest form of mixed cropping—using autonomous machines. He explores the feasibility and profitability of this approach, along with the challenges and opportunities in restoring crop biodiversity and ecosystem services, ultimately fostering better environmental health and sustainable agriculture.
Tune in to learn:
- What is mixed cropping?
- What makes a farm machine “autonomous”?
- How do autonomous machines contribute to environmentally friendly agriculture?
- What are the economic differences between automated strip farming and conventional strip farming?
- What are swarm robots in agriculture?
If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/agj2.21536
This paper is always freely available.
Contact us at [email protected] or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.
If you would like to reach out to James Lowenberg-DeBoer, you can find him here: [email protected]
Resources
Transcripts: https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/NjdhZTQyYmQwNjA1ZDQwNmFmYjNkYTU1LVVGWURKXzFZcFIy/o/VEMwOTcyNzA1Njg4
Center for Effective Innovation in Agriculture: https://www.linkedin.com/company/71561378/admin/dashboard/
Hands Free Farm: www.handsfree.farm
Precision Agriculture Journal: https://link.springer.com/journal/11119
Digitization for Agroecology: https://d4agecol.eu/
Prairie Strips in the Conservation Reserve Program: https://www.nrem.iastate.edu/research/STRIPS/
Stockcropper: https://thestockcropper.com/
Thank you to our volunteer Om Prakash Ghimire for help with the shownotes and other assets. Thank you to Cole Shalk from 12twelve Media for the Audio Processing on today's episode.
Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.
Next Episode
The Soil Health Cycle with Dr. Bijesh Maharjan
“Soil Health Cycle” with Dr. Bijesh Maharjan
Researchers, advisers, and farmers alike know that soil health is important, but taking steps forward in the knowledge of which practices to use and their impacts can be difficult. Enter the soil health cycle, an iterative approach to help track how practices and their implementation take soil health forward. In this episode, Bijesh joins me to discuss his work on the soil health cycle.
Tune in to learn:
· How the soil health cycle is similar to human health care cycles
· What the four steps of the soil health cycle are
· Why it’s important to have a soil health cycle
· What the literature says about the current state of the soil health cycle
If you would like more information about this topic, this episode’s paper is available here: https://doi.org/10.1002/agg2.20504
This paper is always freely available.
Contact us at [email protected] or on Twitter @FieldLabEarth if you have comments, questions, or suggestions for show topics, and if you want more content like this don’t forget to subscribe. If you’d like to see old episodes or sign up for our newsletter, you can do so here: https://fieldlabearth.libsyn.com/.
If you would like to reach out to Bijesh, you can find him here: [email protected] https://x.com/Nebraska_soils
Resources
Transcripts: https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/NjgwMDExNTJlZGVmODgyNjliNWNhMmQzbEVZNXpiYV8xWGtU/o/VEMwOTY5NDE4NDEw
Supracentennial special section call for papers for Soil Science Society of America Journal: https://acsess.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14350661/specialsectioncall#supracentennial-field-experiments
Maharjan Lab: www.maharjanlab.com
Thank you to our volunteer Om Prakash Ghimire for help with other assets. Thank you to Cole Shalk from 12twelve Media for the Audio Processing on today's episode.
Field, Lab, Earth is Copyrighted by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America.
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