09/04/07 Wheat CAP accomplishments

Farm and Ranch September 4, 2007 The four-year federally funded Coordinated Agricultural Project for Wheat, or Wheat CAP has already made some accomplishments. The collaborative project among wheat breeding programs around the nation aims to develop molecular markers to facilitate wheat breeding. University of Idaho wheat breeder Bob Zemetra developed a population of plants from a Brundage-Coda cross specifically for trying to develop markers. Zemetra: "And our first success coming out of the Coda-Brundage population is a new molecular marker to identify plants that carry resistance to cercosporella foot rot. And this was a collaborative program between the ARS at Pullman, my program here at the University of Idaho and Oregon State in Corvallis." Zemetra says it looks like the Brundage-Coda population is also good for developing molecular markers for stripe rust resistance. And there is quite a bit of variation for cephlasporium stripe. Zemetra: "Turns out that this population segregates for the trait. And with work with Oregon State, where they are screening in the eastern part of Oregon, they are generating excellent data for us to be able to find these molecular markers to allow us to select genotypic ally for that disease." Zemetra says the whole goal is to make wheat breeding more efficient and allow breeders to respond more quickly when there are problems in the industry. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.