Just been reading about attempts in Australia to genetically modify wheat for frost tolerance - more at http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/work_progressing_frost_tolerant_wheat

Anyone know why frost damage in wheat is such an issue in Australia? Is this winter frost or frost during the growing period?

branston, the wheat in australia is grown over winter, in our months it is sown in nov/dec and cut in may.

southern hemisphere sowing is done may/june, harvest nov/dec

winter is best rainfall, but frost is a problem in spring as the crop matures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

how much frost do they get in austrilia? i thought hardly any

since there are no clouds to hold the warm air, they get a lot of frost in the southern grain areas. not in the north, where only camels and sand grow.

hot days cold nights, i remember that from my time in new zealand, may till october frost most mornings when fetching the cows but i dont seem to remember it being enough to effect the grass, usualy hot enough for shorts by breakfast

multi-power, I was in NSW from 1979 to 1992. My place was smack on the 30º S line, the line ran through the woolshed. There was an enormous quantity of wheat grown within 100 miles of us, including neighbours with several hundred acres - no really big farms in the immediate area, mostly 2 to 3,000 acres. We had occasional frosts every winter, but never low enough to freeze tap outlets from rain tanks. Sorry no temperature records, I only kept rainfall then, but obviously very little below freezing. I find about minus 3ºC freezes outside taps here until an hour or so after daybreak.

I cannot speak for other areas, and no doubt another few hundred miles south would make a difference - e.g Victoria, South and southern West Australia, but even then I would not have thought frost would be anywhere near as much a problem as in say, winter wheat in the UK and many other countries. There are, of course, ski slopes in Australia (and here) but not in wheat growing areas. I note the article was from WA but I read it as if they thought that frost tolerant varieties were also drough tolerant, and that is why WA was interested in them.

frost is not a problem in the uk  to wheat, as wheat matures here in the summer, not the winter.

i dont know at what stage wheat becomes vulnerable to frost, perhaps after 3rd node, but i have never experienced frost damage to wheat, even at minus 18c.

glasshouse, Wheat matures in the summer in Australia too - Nov/Dec as you have already pointed out. OK, perhaps "officially" summer starts at the December solstice, but temperatures are way, way hotter throughout Australia then than you will ever experience where you live. August and September temperatures (Spring in effect) throughout southern Australia will equal and surpass most days you can expect in July and August. There will be frosts in some areas, but very little as already pointed out, from perhaps the third week of June through to the beginning of August. I still think the article was ambiguous and they were thinking in terms of frost tolerance helping drought tolerance.

old mac, hottest day i ever experienced was 47c in tennant creek, NT.

Wheat in WA comes into ear in september, when frost is a real issue.

glasshouse, I was more intrigued than "need to know" about this issue, and your post (a week ago now) about being in the NT reminded me that you know a wee bit about Australia, and my limited knowledge on the drought/frost tolerance inter-reaction might not be the full story. On top of this we were down to 1.6 and 1.7ºC overnight at the weekend, which gave a ground frost,  so I googled a little a couple of nights ago. It seems that in WA they are putting in a lot of effort with regard to frost tolerance. The weather records I could find in the wheat belt showed that they had between one and two nights each year in September with temperatures similar to those I had at the weekend. 

Just idle curiosity, but how do those temperatures compare with what you would expect at the same growth stage with winter wheat? Would you consider it a sufficient problem to spend the vast amounts that are obviously being spent in WA on research? I know wheat is an extremely important, sometimes the only, crop over a wide area, but I wonder about the proverbial sledgehammer and walnut.

 I would value your opinion, and that of anybody else. As I said, curiosity not need to know, but worldwide agricultural knowledge is sort of a hobby of mine.

Old Mac, i have spent a bit of time over, given the choice it would have been longer.

Last trip out was 08, did TAS and WA. I am no expert, but i think frost is a bigger issue, since it can kill a good crop in one night, and it is a prob in the high yield areas. In scotland, wheat doesnt come into ear till mid june, when frost is unheard of ,at least in wheat growing areas. We would expect the last frost around mid april where i farm, in other areas maybe mid may. Crops in those areas would be less advanced , so a mid may frost would not matter.

The only frost effect i have seen is winter rape flowering before winter due to getting an august fost.

 

 Thanks, one other thing I noticed in the article was an apparent link between copper and frost tolerance. A copper based foliar spray is reckoned to give protection to olive trees (evergreens) against frost damage. Never tried it, only had one killing frost (-7ºC or less) since we came here and I did lose a lot of trees, both mature and some very young ones, millions (literally) of eucalypts killed that night too across a lot of Portugal.