Our work at NIAB with synthetic wheat is truly ground-breaking and offers a non-genetically modified way forward.
Patrick Stephenson from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany(NIAB)To increase yields from cereal crops, improvement is necessary in the efficient conversion the sun's energy into food.
This is the view of Patrick Stephenson from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in England.
At present, the highest yields were operating at 60% to 70% of the theoretical maximum.
In the United Kingdom a national project was studying high-yielding crops to determine how they had been achieved.
The Yield Enhancement Network project was open to all growers as a competition to grow the highest wheat yield on a minimum size of 11ha.
While there were some issues around uniformity of sampling and the averaging of weather data, the project was a good starting point.
Speaking at the Crops 2014 Expo, Mr Stephenson said in the future, cereal yields would have to increase with less land and less water, as competition grows for both commodities, together with a growing world population.
Work undertaken jointly between NIAB and the Foundation for Arable Research on yield potential, had attempted to push varieties to the maximum yield potential, while monitoring the structure of the crop.
This work had confirmed that there was a good correlation between the number of grains per square metre and the final yield.
This was the first indicator that more ears might be required to push wheat yields higher than current levels, Mr Stephenson said.
To achieve the highest maximum yield, more grains per square metre would have to be delivered.
This was likely to be achieved by establishing more ears per square metre.
Breeding was likely to be an important tool for tiller retention and grains per ear.
''Breeding programmes are looking good,'' Mr Stephenson said.
''Our work at NIAB with synthetic wheat is truly ground-breaking and offers a non-genetically modified way forward.''
He said if yields were to be increased, the difficult subject of genetic modification had to be addressed.
Huge potential advances were being discovered but at the moment they must remain in the hands of the politicians, he said.