07/10/07 WSU wheat breeder moving up

Washington Ag July 10, 2007 Washington State University's spring wheat breeder Kim Kidwell has been appointed the new associate dean for academic programs in WSU's College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences effective August 1st. Kidwell will transition into her new position over the next three years to maintain the momentum of her spring wheat variety release efforts, fulfill existing commitments to granting agencies and complete research involving technology with pending patents. Part of Kidwell's current breeding efforts are to get stripe rust resistance in some of her previously released spring wheats. Kidwell: "This year in the trial we have Alpowa with a stripe rust resistance gene in it. We have a Zak line that has two seedling resistance genes in it. I would also like to mention that Kulvinder Gill, you Vogel Chair, has a line in the trial that has a single resistance gene that was generated from Zak, so his material is there as well. And then we have Scarlet that has two seedling resistance genes in it as well." Kidwell says they have tried to address the low test weight of Scarlet and the emergence problem with Alpowa with these new lines. If field testing shows they are better than their progenitors Kidwell says they would like to replace the current version of the varieties with the new lines. I'm Bob Hoff.