Could a new wheat gene could prevent famine?

For decades, food scientists and technologists have been on racing to create a variety of wheat that could maintain or increase its crop yields as we enter a period of global food insecurity brought about by climate change. 

“Wheat is the most widely grown cereal grain,” according to the International Research Development Centre (IDRC), “occupying 17 percent of the total cultivated land in the world.”

The world's most popular crop is such a major staple that it feeds about 35% of the global population and provides humanity with more calories and protein than any other foodstuff the IRDC added. 

But for all of its benefits, the humble wheat crop could be the greatest looming disaster humanity has ever faced. 

“Thanks to human-induced global heating,” wrote the Guardian’s science editor Robin McKie, “our planet faces a future of increasingly severe heat waves, droughts and wildfires that could devastate harvests in future, triggering widespread famine in their wake.”

Wheat is one of the many plants that will not adapt well to our warming world and scientists are predicting that wheat yields could face a significant drop in the coming years. 

In a 2022 study published in the journal Nature, researchers found that historical wheat yields declined between 3.6% and 7.1% per 1 Celsius of warming depending on the strain and time of year, a sign that did not bode well for our future. 

Rising heat isn’t just the only issue wheat crops face. They’re also far more likely to be affected by major droughts in the coming decades. 

“Global warming could cause major droughts in 60% of wheat-growing areas around the world,” according to a study by Harvard researchers published in the peer-reviewed journal of Science Advances. 

“Even if the Paris Agreement’s target of stabilizing temperatures at 2-degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is met,” wrote the study’s managing correspondent Rhea Grover, “severe water scarcity would still double in the next 20 to 50 years.”

But the future crisis that many food scientists fear may not come to pass after the discovery of a new type of heat-resistant wheat that can withstand the worst climate change has to offer. 

A group of researchers led by Professor Graham Moore at the John Innes Center in Norwich, England, have been working on creating a variety of wheat that is resistant to both heat and drought for decades, and they might have found their answer. 

Moore and his team were able to identify a key gene in one of their wheat samples—now labeled Zip4.5B—which could allow future wheat crops to maintain their yields in the face of climate change. 

The team from the John Innes Centre has dubbed their finding the “holy grail” of wheat geneticists and have created a mutated version of the crop and to test the crop soon. 

“We are now going to test these in different varieties of wheat that we have created,” Moore told the Guardian in an interview. “These will then be grown in Spain, on land near Cordoba, to see how well they do.” 

“The aim will be to identify which varieties will do best at surviving the higher temperatures that our farmers are to experience in coming decades,” Moore continued. 

“Wheat has played a remarkable role in human history,” Moore added, “hopefully, this work will help it to maintain its importance as a foodstuff for the future.”