Growers fearing their stream of improved wheat varieties might be in danger of drying up need look no further than the new facility RAGT has built on a greenfield site at Ickleton in Essex.

Considering today’s economic climate, investing £3.5m in combining its UK activities on a former Farmers Weekly Barometer farm shows the confidence its staff have in their ambition to make it the country’s leading provider of new varieties.

In 2004, RAGT bought Monsanto’s wheat breeding operation, which in turn, via Unilever, was derived from the nation’s Plant Breeding Institute at Trumpington, Cambridge.

“Since then we’ve been planning our move away from Maris Lane, Trumpington,” says commercial manager Simon Howell. “I believe that what we’ve done shows we’re here for the long term and clear about our commitment.”

The new unit, which includes polytunnels and glasshouses, will eventually have about 8000sq m under cover. It consists of a main building accommodating everything needed to support the firm’s cereal breeding efforts here and on mainland Europe.

In particular, it contains some of the most modern laboratory equipment to speed the breeding process, through DNA marker technology and quality analysis.

About 58ha (143 acres) of surrounding land will be used for the wheat-breeding programme and trials.

Next December the firm’s seed processing operation at Ely will also be transferred to the new site. “All our high-grade seed production will be based here,” says Mr Howell. “Being able to start with a blank canvas is really important.”

So what can growers expect from the investment? Although throughout Europe RAGT supplies seed from 22 species, wheat is clearly its main target is the UK.

“We are the leading wheat breeder in France, and we aim to be the leader in the UK and across all of Europe,” says European cereal breeding manager Richard Summers.

Cereal genotyping manager Peter Jack, a molecular biologist, who worked with PBI, says the huge advances recently made in understanding human genes have a direct and valuable impact on crop science.

“We’re now at a very exciting time,” says Dr Jack. “Technology is being driven by human genetics and it can all be translated into plant work. Originally, it took 10 years and cost millions of pounds to sequence the human genome. This can now be achieved in days for a few hundred pounds, and similar benefits apply to wheat.”

But it will take time to find the gene combinations that determine yield and the whole range of other characters, desirable and otherwise, to help breed better varieties, he admits.

“The wheat genome is five times the size of the human one, so we’ve a long way to go.”

But the interaction of genes in samples from huge numbers of crosses – the firm makes about 6000 a year producing 5m-6m plants for analysis – is steadily being unravelled, thanks to automated laboratory equipment.

“We now have markers for fusarium head blight, soil-borne mosaic virus, orange blossom midge, eyespot, brown and yellow rust, and we’re beginning to disentangle septoria,” says Dr Summers.

Altogether, markers for 40 traits, including certain aspects of grain quality, have been identified, he notes.

The latest equipment, including an apparently simple grain grinder based on tubed ball-bearings, is speeding assessments of that quality, adds analytics manager Julie Seekings.

“We can now do in six to eight weeks what once would have taken 14 months. It means we can see much earlier how things like alpha-amylase, which affects Hagberg, are being affected by different crosses.”

Near-infrared analysis permits rapid initial screening of 20 characters, she adds. “It’s a sort of predictive test, and we look at about 15,000 samples from August to May.”

Detailed confirmation is carried out using several sophisticated machines which assess grain and flour features, such as protein and gluten content, water absorption and dough strength.

The main thrust of RAGT’s work is to produce robust varieties, stresses Dr Summers. “We’re looking for the key characters that lead to stability of performance.

“Everything is targeted towards putting products with very high yield together with a blend of genes for perfect disease resistance and quality,” she says.

“At the moment yields are increasing by 0.5-1% a year and I certainly don’t see that stopping.”

New RAGT site

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  4.65ha site at Ickleton, Cambridegshire


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  58ha of breeding trials


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  High-yielding robust wheats main UK target


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  Main laboratory support for other EU cereal work


• £3.5m investment