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It was 1874 when a large influx of immigrants from Russia settled in the Great Plains bringing with them a hard red variety of wheat.
This wheat variety grew well in the harsh summers and dry winters.
Hard red winter wheat is still a common sight on the Plains – most especially Kansas – which came to be known as the “breadbasket of the world.” Yet, while Kansas is still a top wheat-producing state, wheat acres have been shrinking. That’s also been true in Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas since the 1980s, as drier conditions and competition from other crops made wheat less attractive to farmers.
But scientists think developing wheat hybrids could usher in a new era.
Developing a hybrid
Wheat hasn’t changed much since it was first brought over to the U.S. Researchers and farmers have worked to improve other crops, such as corn and soybeans, but wheat has proved more difficult.
Agronomist Logan Simon is among scientists working to create hybrids. Most days he tends to his test plots used to experiment with corn, cotton and wheat in western Kansas.
“It gives us some greater optimism as we move into a potentially drier future,” Simon said of the research.
Hybrids usually take good traits from different varieties of a crop and combine them to make a plant that’s healthier, hardier or produces more, even in harsh environments, by carefully selecting traits from parent plants, creating a new variety.
Hybrid varieties could lead to bread with more fiber, healthier livestock herds or biofuels that produce less carbon emissions. And new varieties are becoming increasingly crucial as climate change produces challenging environments for farmers on the Plains.
Other crops like corn and soybeans have a lot of investment from private companies compared to wheat, making their scientific gains unmatched. Katherine Frels has worked for years in wheat breeding at the University of Nebraska, where she has seen this firsthand.
“It’s a smaller crop with lower prices, it has not seen that same level of investment, and so most of the wheat cultivars out on the landscape are still developed by university breeding programs like myself,” Frels said.
Farmers have had innovations in corn hybrids since the 1930s. Soybeans followed shortly in the 1940s. Since corn was hybridized, farmers’ yields have increased about 700%, going from 26 bushels per acre to 183 bushels.
But even with the advent of fertilizers and pesticides, wheat has barely doubled its yields in that same time.
With corn, creating a hybrid is as simple as cutting off the tassel at the top, which produces pollen, and planting it with another variety to cross the two. Frels said destasseling corn was a first job for a lot of Midwestern kids.
But wheat pollinates itself, which has made creating hybrid varieties a lot more challenging.
“One ear of corn can produce thousands of seeds. Wheat only has about 30 kernels,” Frels said. “So when we make a pollination we have to manually go in with tweezers and remove the anthers.”
Frels has worked on potential solutions, such as chemically sterilizing the plant. She said from their research, out of 1,700 wheat hybrid variety trials, hybrid varieties yield more wheat across different rainfall conditions.
“What's been really interesting is that our hybrids tend to be a little bit more of a stable performer,” Frels said. “They take environmental stresses like drought, maybe high temperatures or a more stressful growing season.”
And seed companies have taken notice how important these increases in yields could be for their farmer customers.
Indiana-based Corteva is a global agriculture company that recently announced a breakthrough with its wheat hybrids.
Jessie Alt is the lead wheat breeder at Corteva. Back in 2018, after decades of research, scientists mapped out the genome of wheat. That allows people like Alt to find ways to stop wheat from pollinating itself and breed it to make unique hybrids.
“It has been the most exciting thing of my career,” Alt said. “Like, we can do this.”
Alt said combining different field tools such as drones and understanding genetics have allowed for more hybrid innovations on a larger scale.
What this breakthrough means for wheat farmers is potentially 20% higher yields with less water, which will be critical as the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from South Dakota to Texas, runs dry and farmers switch to non-irrigated crops once their water pumps fail.
Selling farmers on wheat hybrids
But farmers will need to be able to see and feel the crop if they are going to take a chance on it.
“Kick the tires, if you will,” said Jason Gaeddert, a farmer from central Kansas.
About 70% of Corteva’s test plots are in Kansas, including on Gaeddert’s land. He said that the hybrid wheat has looked good and even produced higher yields. He wants to see how much better that wheat will handle drier seasons.
“If it can handle that stress better, then you're going to clearly get a better yield or better quality product. Then, that becomes more profitable,” Gaeddert said.
Most wheat farmers can salvage wheat seed from harvest, saving some money the next planting season. But with hybrids, the seed won’t be reusable because the offspring won’t be the same as the parents. The wheat hybrids would need to make enough profit for farmers to justify the increased cost.
“It will be something to weigh the options, but I’ll spend more money to make more money,” Gaeddert said.
Corteva hopes to roll out hybrid wheat on the markets in 2027.
Mike Krieghauser is an agronomist for Pioneer, a subsidiary of Corteva. He works with farmers in northwest Kansas and says some farmers he’s spoken to are excited to try a wheat hybrid, even if it costs more.
“They're pretty pumped because in our areas we're trying to conserve water, but yet, we still got to get yields,” Krieghauser said.
From his perspective, the easiest sell for him when talking to farmers is that hybrids are easy to adopt, they won’t have to change anything they are already doing.
“I mean, it's wheat,” he said. “It should be the easiest adopting hybrid thing that we've ever done in the history of agriculture.”
This reporting was originally published by the Kansas News Service. This version was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.