08/09/06 OSU working on hard red winter wheat

Farm and Ranch August 9, 2006 Developing hard red winter wheats has not been a priority in the Oregon State University wheat breeding program. But wheat breeder Jim Peterson understands the interest and value of hard red winter in the marketplace right now and he has two hard reds lines being advanced. Peterson: "These are lines we have identified and developed in collaboration with the Nickerson breeding program in France. High end, French blooded wheats, but what is unique about these is they appear to have the same hard red winter wheat quality that we consider the classic hard red winter wheat quality of the Midwest wheats that we need to market U.S. wheat. So we've matched the quality along with some really unique plant type and yield potential and I think give you some better alternatives in a hard red winter wheat for production in the PNW." Those lines are ORN00B507 and ORN00B553. One of them, 553, is a sister line to a variety that was registered in Italy in 2004 called "Capernico. Both of the OSU selections were entered in the 2006 hard wheat variety trials for Oregon and Washington and could be released as early as 2007. As the lines were accessed through OSU's cooperative research agreement with Nickerson in France, OSU anticipates a semi-exclusive or limited release will be necessary. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.