Rye

Rye - Secale cereale

(Winter rye, spring rye)

Rye is a cereal cultivated in temperate latitudes, especially in regions with sandy soils in Central and Eastern Europe. Rye makes for 1 per cent of the world cereal production. The biggest rye producers are Russia, Poland and Germany. In 2008, 3.68 million tons of rye have been harvested from a cultivation area of 738,000 hectares in Germany.

Traditional Bread Cereal

Rye is like wheat a traditional bread cereal. The renowned diversity of German bread types is a result of multiple combinations of these two cereals. Rye is also an important part of animal feed. A new utilization for rye is to use it as energy crop for bioethanol or biogas production. Rye also plays a role in the starch industry and for liquor production (vodka or korn).

The Decisive Step: Hybrid Breeding

As strictly open-pollinating crop, rye populations  are heterozygous and heterogeneous and present a great variability. This has been an obstacle to selecting superior lines with better traits for breeding throughout the 19th and still in the 20th century. Plant breeding only succeeded in generating substantially improved performance when hybrid breeding was introduced in the 1980ies. In Germany, approximately 60 per cent of the rye cultivation area is planted with hybrid rye varieties. On less favourable sites, they perform clearly better than other cereals under comparable agricultural conditions. Innovative breeding has provided some 40 different varieties of rye to German farmers.

The Future: Adapting to Climatic Changes

Today, breeding focuses on optimised yields and adaptation of varieties to changing climatic conditions. Plant breeders also work on improved processing characteristics of rye. Modern breeding methods help to understand the genetics of rye and the interaction of genes with the environment. This shortens breeding cycles and contributes to achieving further breeding progress.