India and Australia, two key wheat producers of the world have been collaborating in the field of research for many years. Paul Fox of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research on a recent visit to Directorate of Wheat Research, Karnal spoke to FE?s Chanpreet Khurana on various emerging issues associated with wheat research. Excerpts:

India and Australia have been working together for three years on wheat research. What has been the outcome of those projects?

We are collaborating quite intensively now. We have a long common history working together in wheat. The problem soils of Australia are very similar to the problem soils of India. The collaboration is a century-long collaboration, but it is becoming more intense and scientific.

Please elaborate on the commonality in soil and climate in India and Australia?

The bio-physical features of soil, weather and adaptation are very similar. But when you actually look at farm holdings in Australia, it has large farms. In India, it tends to be much smaller (holdings). But irrespective of that the wheat varieties we need are actually the same?both for those huge Australian farms and the small Indian holdings?because the overriding driver of the similarity is the soil type.

And the projects the two countries are collaborating on?

We are looking at disease-resistance, yield potential, water-logging, micro-nutrient problems, water-use efficiency, specifically looking at new root architecture for wheat for use in both countries, and we are looking at industrial processing quality of wheat?be it bread, biscuits or chappati.

Could you highlight some of the learnings from this collaboration with India?

We have got some very interesting environments in the peninsula part of India where you can grow wheat crop in receding moisture level?as the season dries out and the water table drops, the wheat varieties that are able to survive are the ones in which the roots go down and follow the receding water table. We find this an extremely useful for us. We have huge water-use efficiency problems in Australia, we don?t get this predictability. Every time we go to the field to try and track varieties that do extremely well under limited rainfall, we have the once-in-a-hundred year that dumps all this rain on our trial sites. So we have very little predictability from measuring things such as new root architecture to extract moisture. But in peninsular India, in places like Indore and Pune, we have these open air laboratories where we can screen out varieties for this ability to follow the water down through the season.

Your views on food security and climate change?

The whole problem of sustainability is a huge question. This is where you see a huge difference: In Australia, we have got a population of about 22 million on the whole continent; in India, just the Indo-Gangetic plain feeds a billion people. So, interestingly, we are working on the same problems and on maintaining or increasing yields with the same natural resource base. It is a huge challenge for us.

We are also associated in developing wheat varieties for conservation of agriculture?the retention of stubble, maintaining soil health for the long term, improving or maintaining the environmental base. At the same time as we are improving the genetic base of the wheat and trying to increase the genetic yield potential of the wheat crop, we are also trying to target not only the yield potential but the gap between yield potential and what is being achieved on farm.

What is the wheat production scenario in Australia like currently?

In Australia, wheat is mainly all grown on natural rainfall. Irrigation in Australia is a very scarce resource and it is well directed only towards higher value crops. Australia probably grows about 22 million tonne of wheat over 12 million hectare per year. But because of the basic low population in Australia, the bulk of Australian wheat is exported.