Grain mineral contents in southeastern Australia

Results of a survey of wheat grain nutrient concentrations

IPNI-2010-AUS-01

17 Jan 2010

Project Description


The objective of this project is to develop a data set of mineral contents of Australian wheat grown across southeastern Australia. There is little spatial data on wheat mineral contents, and this project will source grain samples from the National Variety Evaluations (see http://www.nvtonline.com.au/home.htm) which manages a large number of variety comparisions across the grain producing regions of Australia. Grain samples will be sourced from these experiment and analysed using ICP for mineral levels. Grain N (protein) content is determined by the NVT project and is publicly available. Within this data set, the varieties Yitpi and Gladius have been selected and this will provide a contrast in genotype - Yipti is the most commonly grown variety in southeastern Australia and Gladius is a relatively new release that appears to have wide adaptation across the region.
These data will provide valuable information on nutrient removal across a wide range of environments and a better understanding of the variability in nutrient content will give confidence to the values obtained in nutrient balance estimates.
These two varieties are also represented in the Australian Grains Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment experiment (ANZ-02) and the data from the field survey will assist in providing a baseline to assess grain nutrient levels with changing climates.