09/03/07 The Wheat CAP

Farm and Ranch September 3, 2007 The Wheat CAP, or Coordinated Agricultural Project for wheat, is a USDA funded four-year collaborative program to develop molecular markets to facilitate the breeding of improved wheat varieties. The national program is broken into regions and the western region includes, California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington and Montana. University of Idaho wheat breeder Bob Zemetra says the goal is to identify markers for traits that would improve the profitability for farmers. Zemetra: "And that would be something such as disease resistance so they don't have to spray, use a chemical. It may be for an agronomic trait such as straw strength. And it might be something like end use quality so we can help our millers and bakers." Zemetra says molecular markers increase the efficiency of wheat breeders and potentially decreases costs for some of their screening. Zemetra: "Where it might be quite costly to screen for insect resistance, if we knew the molecular marker related to the insect resistance we could then evaluate our material without the need to infest until right at the end when we want to make sure the plant actually carries resistance." Zemetra says a key to developing markers is to develop populations that differ for the traits breeders are interested in. He has done that with two Pacific Northwest wheats, Brundage and Coda, a soft white winter and a soft winter club. Tomorrow, Zemetra talks about the success they have had developing markers from that Brundage-Coda population. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.