The cultivation of wheat in South Africa has come a long way since being hulled across sea in 1652 when wheat was first brought into SA. Now, in 2021, South Africa boasts multiple top wheat breeding programs, such as that of Syngenta (formerly Sensako), Corteva AgriscienceTM (formerly Pannar) and ARC Small Grains which breed high quality wheat in South Africa. The International Grains Council (IGC) puts South Africa’s total grains production in 2020-21 at 2.1 million tons of wheat (WorldGrain.com). South African wheat is now at the forefront of international scientific news after a research paper was published in the March edition of the scientific journal Nature Genetics (DOI: 10.1038/s41588-022-01022-1). This paper not only documented the sequencing of the first South African wheat genome, Kariega, which shows robust stripe rust resistance, but the cloning of a stripe rust disease resistance gene too (Yr27)!
