Washington State University researcher Diter von Wettstein is pursuing two ventures that could boost markets for wheat and barley.
Von Wettstein is working to develop nutritionally improved, celiac-safe wheat cultivars and breeding barley cultivars for the Pacific Northwest that would be resistant to the herbicide imidazolinone, commonly used by farmers.
Von Wettstein said he has wheat lines where he’s obtained a 76.4 percent reduction in the accumulation of the key gluten proteins. The next step is silencing the remaining percentage.
Rich Koenig, associate dean and director of WSU Extension, said the wheat project involves removing the gluten material that causes the adverse reaction in people who have celiac disease. The National Institutes of Health and Washington State’s Life Science Discovery Fund have provided funding for von Wettstein’s research.
Read the full, original story here: “WSU researcher ‘very close’ on celiac-safe wheat, herbicide-tolerant barley”
