In Chile, bread wheat accounts for 92% of the total wheat area and consumption is 96 kg per capita, which represents 2.4 million tons per year. Spring wheat varieties are sown in the Mediterranean and temperate regions of the country (between 33°40’ and 40°53’ S). This large environmental diversity challenges the wheat breeding program, whose principal aim is to create new cultivars with increased resilience to drought stress. Anken-INIA is a spring wheat that originated from a crossing made by the wheat breeding program of INIA, Chile, in 2000. Some characteristics of this variety are: height at adult stage 85–105 cm, white spike, with long awns along it.

The grain is red, vitreous, with an average thousand kernel weight between 46–54 gr. Anken-INIA exhibits alleles 1, 17+18 and 2+12 at the homoeologous GluA1, GluB1 and Glu1D loci. The variety does not carry the 1BL.1RS rye translocation, and thus its Corrected Glutenin Score reaches a maximum value of 8. In early sowing dates (beginning of August), flowering occurs after 98-100 days. Up to the 2023-2024 season, Anken-INIA has shown resistance to stripe rust (Puccinia striiformis West. f. sp. tritici), leaf rust (Puccinia triticina Erikss.), powdery mildew (Blumeria graminis DC. f. sp. tritici Marchal), and and tolerant to Zymoseptoria tritici (Mycosphaerella graminícola (Fuckel) J. Schröt.)

The cross and pedigree is: PASTOR//SRMA/TUIC 8176-4C-1C-0C-1C-0C. The parentals are from CIMMYT nurseries and were selected in trials distributed in central-south of Chile. The parental SMRA/TUI comes from the 8th SAWYT (semi-arid wheat yield trial), and PASTOR is a CIMMYT genotype evaluated in drought and high-temperature conditions in northern Mexico.

Ankén-INIA was evaluated in field experiments between 2009 and 2022, in rainfed and irrigated environments: Cauquenes (rainfed; 35°58’S, 72°17’W), Santa Rosa (irrigated, 36°31’S, 71°54’W), Yungay (rainfed and irrigated, 37°14’S, 72°01’W), Humán (irrigated, 37º43’S, 72°41’W) and Carillanca (rainfed, 38°69’S, 72°41’W).

In rainfed environments, grain yield of Ankén-INIA was 6.11% higher than control varieties Pantera-INIA and 5.33% higher than Pandora-INIA from 2009/2010 to 2011/2012, and 27,73% and 10,99% higher than Pantera-INIA and Pandora-INIA, respectively, between 2020/2021 to 2022/2023. Under irrigation conditions, Ankén-INIA presented a high yield potential between 8-11 t ha-1.

All these productive and quality characteristics make Ankén-INIA a new alternative for farmers who produce under drought and temperature stress conditions.