Overview of the Wheat Initiative and an Expert Working Group for Agronomy.

The Wheat Initiative Agronomists Community is aligned to the Wheat Initiative’s Expert Working Group (EWG) for Agronomy (www.wheatinitiative.org ), with a collective goal to "co-ordinate global wheat research efforts so that, through international efforts, the progress needed to increase wheat production, quality and sustainability can be achieved, thus contributing to the global efforts towards food security and safety under changing climate conditions.” It is also responsive to the Wheat Initiative’s stated research need “A knowledge transfer strategy to ensure uptake of new knowledge and innovations at the farm gate and to update scientists on changing field realities.” The main aim of this Community would be to consolidate the global expertise for agronomy with a focus on wheat production systems. The overarching approach would be to develop and adopt a “systems agronomy framework” relevant to any wheat production system. Such an approach first establishes the scale of current yield gaps identifying physiologically defensible benchmarks, and then takes a holistic approach to understand and overcome exploitable yield gaps. Finally, new opportunities to drive increased productivity would be sought by capturing future GxExM synergies identified in different systems. The EWG would then be able to influence priorities for wheat agronomy research in member countries that would facilitate collaborations, minimize duplication and maximise the likely global impact on wheat production systems.