After 15 years of work, Australian scientists have successfully grown salt-resistant wheat.

The CSIRO first identified the gene in the 1990s and now, using non-GM crop breeding techniques, University of Adelaide researchers have successfully grown a durum wheat crop.

Scientists are now hoping they can develop their salt-resistant strain for bread wheat.

Adelaide University's Dr Matthew Gilliham says when salt accumulates under in the leaves of wheat, it becomes toxic and reduces the plant yield.

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"We have identified a gene from an ancestor of modern wheat that when inserted into a modern commercial variety of wheat improves its salinity tolerance in the field in terms of grain yield by up to 25 per cent," he told the ABC's AM program.

"This gene functions by preventing the salt from the soil getting up into the leaves of the plant."

Dr Gilliham says in Australia, where wheat is grown in dry land conditions, salinity is a naturally occurring problem.

"It's currently estimated that about 69 per cent of the Australian wheat belt is affected by salinity, and currently about 11 per cent of the total agricultural land in Australia is affected by salinity," he said.

"This figure is predicted to rise to about 34 per cent in the next 38 years due to the affects of climate change.

"Salinity is also a problem in many areas of the world that have a similar climate to Australia."

But salinity can also be a problem in irrigated agriculture - which produces about 30 per cent of the world's food needs - if crops are irrigated with water that contains salt.

Durum wheat is used to make products like pasta and couscous, but scientists are now working to develop a salt-resistant strain of bread wheat.

"The potential gains for bread wheat will hopefully also be significant," Dr Gilliham said.

"Obviously bread wheat is a much larger crop than durum wheat.

"The great thing about improving the salinity tolerance of durum wheat - certainly for Australian farmers - is that there is a premium for durum wheat."

He says durum wheat has already entered breeding programs and he hopes a commercially available wheat will be available in under five years.

"Now we've identified the gene we can also use GM technologies to transfer this gene across to other species as well," he said.

"So this may improve not only the salinity tolerance of wheat but also of other crop plants."

The results are published today in the journal Nature Biotechnology.