As part of a national project funded by the Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC), the damage caused to both wheat and barley has been examined after each frost over several years.

Ben Biddulph from the Department of Agriculture and Food (DAFWA) is leading the project in Western Australia, and recently presented its latest findings to a Frost Workshop in Perth, organised by the GRDC.

Dr Biddulph said the good news was that the varieties showing damage were consistent across states.

“We have concentrated on severe frosts in the past, and while some barley varieties have suffered more than others, with wheat everything was wiped out so we couldn’t see whether some varieties were more tolerant,” Dr Biddulph said.

“This year we’ve looked at the damage caused in frosts of two degrees above zero – even though they’re so minor that in many cases growers wouldn’t even report the damage.

“What we’ve found is that with those events there are consistent differences between wheat, as well as barley, varieties in the amount of damage.

“That means there is genetic variation for frost tolerance in existing varieties, and eventually it should be possible to identify the genes responsible and produce more tolerant varieties.”

Barley flowers earlier in head development so there’s usually more physical protection by the time frosts hit the crop, whereas wheat is fully exposed, which is why it was harder to identify levels of damage in different wheat varieties when we were just looking at severe frosts.

Dr Biddulph said frost tolerance was a difficult trait to work on because there were a lot of factors at play.

“We tend to use temperature to determine the severity of a frost, but there are other factors at work; the level of damage caused by two events of minus three degrees is rarely the same, but the variety rankings are consistent," he said.

“Because there is consistency in the damage caused to each variety we can rule out some environmental factors.

“We’re still some years away from identifying and screening for the gene responsible, let alone breeding frost tolerant wheat varieties, but we’re looking long-term and are confident we can make progress."

The GRDC invests about $17 million a year in pre-breeding, working with research and funding partners to discover novel genes, traits and molecular markers that can then be used to develop improved varieties.