Frost-after-spike-emergence (FASE) is a major production risk to global grain production. Assessing germplasm for its performance under frost stress under field conditions poses significant challenges. Field climate conditions are characterised by variability and unpredictability, making it challenging to decipher Genotype x Environment interactions unless the environments are thoroughly characterised. Establishing and characterising a long-term field screening site to phenotype large populations of wheat to search for tolerance to the reproductive effects of frost on wheat and other grain crops is of the utmost priority for wheat growers.

To establish a site in the Mediterranean Wheatbelt environment of Western Australia several key criteria must be met:

1) the site needs to be frost prone but able to give discriminating levels of damage;

2) the site must be as uniform as possible in elevation and soil type;

3) it must be flat but have enough local topography for cold air masses to pool consistently over the trial area;

4) it must have access to a large volume of water for irrigation for early sown (often dry sown) crops;

5) be situated close to a major city or town to service the site with research scientists, technical staff, contractors and casual labour for assistance with field measurements.

Agronomically the site needs to be managed to ensure uniform frost impacts with bulk crops sown early around the trial area to lead to early canopy closure and remain until after the frost window, while managing the rotational impacts of the site.

The Dale Research Site was established in 2016 and began from its humble beginnings with water supplied by two trailing knocker sprinklers, four firefighting pumps and one dam. From 2017 is was developed into a 40ha sight, with eight irrigated 75 x 360 m blocks that irrigated by a 70 m lateral irrigator, bore water and pumping systems backed up by a 16GL storage.

Two onsite weather stations and a significant number of Tinytag temperature loggers. The site to date has: screened ~1,200 of wheat germplasm for frost tolerance; evaluated biological and chemical treatment of ice-nucleating bacteria (2019 to 2024); demonstrated the power of a distributed temperature sensing network (DTS) (2017 to 2018); showed impact of crop nutrition (N, P & K) and canopy density and plant height on frost damage in wheat; been used for studies into the impact of ice nucleation activity in crop plants via stationary and drone field thermography (2017, 2018, 2020); yield studies under frost conditions (2016 to 2019), development of field-based frost controls to study yield impacts of frost (2017 to 2019).

The Dale Research Site has proven to be a reliable field phenotyping site for abiotic stress research over the last decade. Further investment into the establishment of similar sites for abiotic stresses is required to increase the throughput of germplasm to enhance abiotic stress tolerance in wheat crops globally.