Food productivity of the world's agriculture systems is highly dependent on the production of hybrid crops. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has recommended that major wheat yield improvements must play a key role to ensure future global food security. Experts agree the most promising way to improve wheat yields is to capture the higher productivity and vigor associated with hybridity. Despite 60+ years of effort by the seed industry to develop hybrid wheat as a commercial product all the U.S. wheat acreage is still planted to self-pollinated varieties. Failure to ensure timely and intended cross-pollinations renders production of hybrid® wheat seed extremely inefficient and cost prohibitive. Our PowerPollen technology to preserve® and apply viable pollen on-demand is changing this paradigm. Developing a PowerPollen system for wheat presents significant technical challenges due to the short life of pollen and feasibility of collecting sufficient pollen for on-demand pollinations. We are seeking to overcome these limitations by developing novel technologies to extract large volumes of highly viable pollen directly from anthers collected from excised wheat spikes. The goal of this Phase I SBIR project is to prove the feasibility of developing a scalable technology for collecting large volumes of viable wheat pollen. This engineering achievement is essential to enable on-demand pollination and revolutionize hybrid wheat seed production. The research objectives are: (1) Prove the feasibility of designing/constructing a scalable method for mechanically harvesting male wheat spikes containing mature viable pollen (2) Construct a scalable prototype to validate the concept of separating anthers containing viable pollen from green plant material and (3) Develop and prove an efficient method of liberating viable pollen grains from intact wheat anthers for subsequent conditioning and storage. Anticipated Results and
Potential Commercial Applications:® Our preliminary data show that PowerPollen technology extends the viability of wheat pollen dramatically. Pollen with the highest viability resides in anthers which can be isolated from the flowers mechanically. We anticipate the novel methods being evaluated in this Phase I project will provide sufficient volumes of viable wheat pollen to enable bulk storage and field-scale evaluation of on-demand applications in Phase II. We have existing relationships with major seed® companies and have demonstrated the value of PowerPollen in maize under commercial field conditions. Our communications with leadership in the hybrid wheat industry and wheat breeders confirm that current hybrid wheat production systems result in only about 40 to 50% seed set due to inadequate pollinations. The cost to produce hybrid seed using cytoplasmic male sterility is about $1000 per hectare; the cost is more than double that value using gametocide to induce sterility. A productive female inbred allowed to self-pollinate can produce 6 tons/hectare. If sowell-managed hybrid system requiring 35% male inbred achieving 50% seed set would yield about® 2 tons per hectare under favorable conditions. Assuming conservatively that a PowerPollen application can result in 75% seed set this would result in a 50% increase in hybrid seed yield to® 3 tons per hectare. At a COGS for hybrid wheat seed of $500/ton the value add for PowerPollenin this scenario is about $500 per hectare. A licensing/royalty fee that captures 25% of this value would equate to $125 of revenue per hectare. The value add would be more than double forgametocide-based systems and if the area allocated to male inbreds could be decreased. Using this® model and projected market penetration we expect significant revenue for wheat PowerPollen within 5 years after completion of this Phase I project with revenues reaching $38MM for 10
