October 11, 2011

Australia is home to world's only successful perennial wheat crop

Australia's perennial wheat crop is growing for three years while other plants across the world died after two years after germination.

Perennial wheat re-germinates every year while conventional wheat must be replanted annually.

Researcher Richard Hayes says he's surprised the wheat was able to survive in the Australian climate.

"Perennial grain is actually made artificially by hybridising a perennial grass to an annual wheat, we had some scepticism as to if that would actually work, we were also sceptical that it would work in our environment, we actually got the stuff to survive and we didn't expect to," he said.