Roadblocks to Hybrid Wheat Seed Production: An Analysis of Constraints

Abstract

There is great pressure on wheat, a crucial staple crop of global importance due to issues such as climate change, rising population numbers, and both microorganismic (biotic) and mineral (abiotic) stress. Heterosis can be employed in developing superior characters in hybrid wheat resulting from crosses between highly divergent parents. However, hybrid wheat has been beset with problems such as self-pollination, low heterosis, prohibitive production cost, and small scale of consumer acceptance. It explores how hybrid wheats are produced such as chemical hybridising agents, cytoplasmic male sterility and genomic selection. This aspect entails difficulties and complexity associated with hybrid wheat production such as hybrid incompatibility, unstable genetics, diverse heterotic families and requirement for genomic prediction of hybrid vigour. Hybrid wheat’s lag of adoption in India is discussed with a special view put on particular problems associated with that country alone.  Nevertheless, there are still some issues associated with heterotic grouping and sterility systems specific for the Indian situation. Nevertheless, significant efforts, including the hybrid network of ICAR or transgenic methods, give hope to future. Finally, it should be noted that although hybrid wheat appears to have a great promise of high yield and good grain quality, bio-genetic limitations must be sorted first. Addressing these hurdles is essential if hybrid wheat is expected to increase food security and improve nutrition amid dwindling water resources due to growing populations worldwide.