Wheat breeders target more nutrition, less pollution

In most wheat kernels, 75 percent of phosphorus is stored as phytic acid, which is virtually indigestible by humans and non-ruminant livestock. Instead, it passes through our digestive systems and enters the environmental waste stream. Rather than providing us with nutrition, it’s broken down by bacteria in Idaho’s waterways and fuels the bullying activities of algae.

A solution: develop wheat varieties that tie up less phosphorus as phytic acid. By mutating wheat seed with chemicals, a team led by UI Aberdeen Research & Extension Center wheat breeder Ed Souza has developed an experimental wheat line that nearly halves the amount of unavailable phosphorus in both the flour that humans eat and the bran that’s fed to livestock. Researchers suspect that two genes determine the low-phytic-acid trait: one that they’ve located and another that they’re still pursuing.

Because phytic acid also interferes with iron availability, Souza hopes the team’s work will lead to commercially-ready wheats that offer more of both nutrients to Third World consumers, who derive much of their nutrition from grains. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project “may be one of the few things I’ve done professionally that has the potential for global impact—and that’s pretty exciting,” he says. Contact Souza at esouza@uidaho.edu.

--Marlene Fritz

© 2003 University of Idaho, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences.