Breeding for Winter Hardiness in Cereals.
D.B. Fowler and A.E. Limin

ABSTRACT

The growth of all commercial crop species is limited by low-temperature (LT) stress at some stage in their life cycle. Plants differ in their ability to make physiological and biochemical adjustments that help them to survive LT stress and these differences have been exploited by plant breeders to produce winter hardy cultivars, However, while much is known about plant LT response, the maximum cold-hardiness potential within winter cereal species has reached a stubborn plateau that has not been raised for decades.

Advances in biotechnology have provided opportunities for plant breeders to expand their attack on the winter-hardiness barrier that has frustrated them for so long. Exploitation of this new technology to produce adapted. super-hardy cultivars will require close cooperation between plant breeders and biotechnologists. This interdisciplinary effort will be expensive and immediate breakthroughs should not be expected, but progress to date suggests that we now have the tools to identify the pieces of the winterhardiness puzzle.

Keywords

winter cereals, cold hardiness, selection methods, gene transfer, gene regulation, gene expression

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