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Speed Breeding with Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. It's Friday, it's the weekend.
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  In the UK it's a bank holiday.
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  I'm sat here, we've just cracked open some ciders in the office.
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  It's an 8.2% so it's pretty strong.
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  Today's subject is going to be about speed breeding.
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  So this is hydroponics that's used to increase the speed at which you can breed plants.
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  So you may know that one of my big bugbears when it comes to hydroponics
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  is the term used for indoor commercial
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  hydroponics and it's often called cea or
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  controlled environment agriculture however most
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  of the crops all of the crops grown in indoor hydroponics
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  are horticultural none of them are
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  agricultural agricultural means things like
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  cereals and maize and livestock and things like this
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  and you can't grow wheat hydroponically
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  commercially you can do it experimentally and there have been a number of trials
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  nasa did a lot of work on breeding and growing wheat plants in hydroponics they
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  did it not in florida or texas where you normally expect nasa to be doing their research and
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  No, this particular NASA research was in Utah.
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  Utah, Utah Sates. Do you remember that song from the 1980s?
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  1990s, Utah Sates. It's where Salt Lake City is, isn't it?
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  So yeah, in the early 80s, they did lots of research on growing,
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  they bred a type of wheat that could be grown hydroponically, USU Apogee.
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  Apogee is the name of a company that make light sensors as well, isn't it?
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  I think anyway it was dwarf and it could flower a
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  lot faster than normal wheat and get to harvest a
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  lot early so they did a lot of research and then obviously other
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  researchers have been progressing this since to find out
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  the optimum growth conditions for grown wheat
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  they're fairly standard though i mean you know 21 to
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  23 degrees celsius that's normal for most
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  crops in hydroponics a light level of 510
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  to 930 micromoles per meter squared per second that's if
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  you if you know light levels that's pretty standard as
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  well it's not massively high or massively low and 1000
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  to 1200 ppm of
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  co2 which again that's that's standard
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  for the optimum for many plant growing so 20
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  21 to 23 at the day 18 to 20
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  at night and so that they develop new
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  lines of of wheat and they they looked
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  obviously for space travel and things like that and but
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  wheat research has continued and hydroponics has
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  been a key part of that and part of that is speed breeding and
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  this can be applied to other crops so don't if you're not interested in wheat you don't
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  need to turn off but basically when you're when it's
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  an annual plant like wheat or any other type of cereal you
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  normally have one stab doing a cross
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  and growing that cross to see what it results in in your
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  field and your experimental station and then.
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  You can double that up if you have another experimental station in the southern
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  hemisphere so a lot of research organizations have partnerships in new zealand
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  south africa argentina places like this australia and you have you can grow
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  your wheat in the northern hemisphere
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  take the seeds grow them down in the southern hemisphere and vice.
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  And that halves the time it takes to produce inbred lines and go through the
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  number of cycles it requires to produce a whole new variety of any plant.
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  So that's what conventionally happens.
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  So the big breeders will do have a research station down in the southern hemisphere
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  and the smaller ones will only do one.
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  Obviously, with perennial crops, that's not the case, and you just have to grow
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  them for years and years and years, and then cross them when they're mature.
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  So breeding apples is very difficult. It doesn't normally involve inbred lions.
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  But with hydroponics, you can get a number of different crops per year.
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  So you're going from one, potentially, to four to six.
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  So that massively speeds up the amount of crosses you can do.
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  Now, we're not going into the details of breeding and
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  how you deer it in this episode just to the the rationale of
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  using hydroponics now obviously the wheat or any
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  crop you're growing hydroponically will not react in the same
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  way as it will in the field so
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  that's something important to consider now wheat in
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  a hydroponic system will grow completely different until it will outdoors and
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  same for any crop if you grow buddlias hydroponically buddlia
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  is a ornamental plant without any uv light
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  it produces massive of leaves but if you grow
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  outdoors it produces fairly normal fairly small leaves
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  and that's because indoors is completely different so you
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  couldn't breed for a feature about like
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  architecture or even yield really it would
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  really be breeding to breed in a feature that was not going to be influenced
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  by the location so it could be an active ingredient it could be a protein content
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  It could be something that's not going to change between growing it hydroponically
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  and indoors and growing it outdoors.
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  So you'd have to pick a feature, a trait that suited that and wasn't going to
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  be upset by breeding some of the cycles in an indoor grow environment.
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  It's still going to take a long time to grow these plants indoors.
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  And wheat has a very long time. It has to senesce and dry out and things like this.
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  So it's still not fast, but there are a number of research organisations that
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  are now using hydroponics to breed wheat with this speed breeding.
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  Could be a feature more in the future with genetic selection.
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  If you can select a trait from just analysing the genes in the plants and how they're expressed,
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  then you don't actually have to see the trait appear so it
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  could be your your you have a genetic trait for
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  yield or for disease resistance and you're
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  just checking that it's that's appeared in the in
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  the new plants so you might do this with like tomatoes you
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  might have a gene in a wild type plant that
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  you know is related to an antioxidant in
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  the tomato fruit or it might be a
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  color or a texture or ability to withstand
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  transportation without going moldy and things
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  like this and you can rather than do an experiment to find out
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  whether it withstands transportation stuff like
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  that you can just select see the gene is expressed in when you've
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  crossed it into the other variety so with this with
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  this technique you can get a variety of of wheat or
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  any other annual plant in six to seven years
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  which seems like a long time but for a true new variety this isn't a long time
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  that's a short period of time you're talking 15-20 years normally that's why
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  in some perennial or long living plants plants that are dioecious plants that
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  are self incompatible you'll often hear.
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  Rather than saying a variety, they might talk about strains because they're not true breeding.
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  They're not, they'd not be inbred. They're not F1 hybrids and things like this.
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  So that's why you often hear the word strain in certain crops rather than variety.
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  Cultivar is another term that you'll see. That just means cultivated variety.
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  It's a portman chew. Is that the word?
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  They love them in horticulture. Sticking two words together.
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  Polytunnel, plastic tunnel, polythene tunnel, polytunnel, strimmer, string trimmer.
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  There's loads of them i've got a whole list of them once so yeah
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  that's a diversion anyway so that's been hydroponics daily
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  for today speed breeding with hydroponics obviously you
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  can't grow wheat commercially with hydroponics but you can
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  speed breed it and you could
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  then you know have massive inputs and increases in
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  field grown cereals which is what we need if
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  we're going to feed an ever-increasing population so that's
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  been hydroponics daily for today as i say if you're
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  interested in anything you want to get in touch with
• 7:54
  us please send me an email you'll find us on the eutrema
• 7:57
  website as eutrema is latin for
• 8:00
  wasabi you'll also find lots of different biostimulants like tricontinol humic
• 8:04
  acid seaweed and and liquid gold as we sell in the uk and in america gold leaf
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  until tomorrow i don't know what i'm going to talk about tomorrow but i'm probably
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  going to record it now i'm going to do some batch recordings which will be interesting
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  thank you very much for listening goodbye.