11/21/06 PNW hard red winter wheat quality

Farm and Ranch November 21, 2006 How does the quality of the hard red winter wheat produced in the Pacific Northwest stack up against the wheat produced in the heart of the U.S. hard red winter wheat belt such as Kansas? With increasing interest in producing hard red in this region, the Washington Wheat Commission paid to have a Kansas lab conduct tests on composite samples of this year's PNW hard red winter wheat crop and compare it to the crop in the Plains. The samples came from farmers' fields. Commission CEO Tom Mick sums up the results. Mick: "I am very pleased to report that four of the five were almost as good as the Kansas wheat. In some areas they were as good. So this relieves a lot of concern that we've had although we do recognize in some of the areas on questionable varieties their showing very poor quality and we'd like to see them eliminated and farmers planting acceptable quality varieties. But this shows that we can produce a quality hard red winter if we use the right varieties." Loaf volume is a measure of hard red winter wheat quality. The 2006 crop from the Plains had an average loaf volume this year of 871 cubic centimeters. Hard red samples from Washington in Benton and Franklin counties produced loaf volumes of from 825 to 875. Walla Walla county was the lowest at 785. Loaf volumes from different regions in Idaho ranged from 815 to 950. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.