100th Wheat Variety & Stripe Rust Forecast

I’m Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

Arron Carter, lead researcher of the WSU winter wheat breeding program, says that “Jasper”, the new winter wheat variety released this spring, is exceptional for several reasons.

CARTER: William Jasper Spillman was the first wheat breeder at WSU and so Jasper is named to honor him, and kind of honor everybody that’s helped contribute to wheat breeding. It has good adult plant resistance to stripe rust, it has good end use quality for our export markets for soft white - good milling qualities, low protein, kind of those things that the export market likes to see. And then it’s got a very high yield potential; it’s one of those lines that seems to be fairly stable across different environments. These past year’s where we’ve had really dry conditions, a lot of drought, this has been one of those lines that has been able to maintain its yield potential very well.

Carter says foundation seed will be available in the fall of 2016 when seed dealers will plant Jasper for certified seed production, and that certified seed will be widely available to growers in the fall of 2017.

After finding stripe rust on susceptible varieties in wheat research plots in Walla Walla ARS Research Plant Pathologist Xianming Chen has updated his stripe rust forecast for the eastern Pacific Northwest from moderate to severe, and advises wheat farmers to closely monitor their fields. Though Chen says this year should not be as bad for stripe rust as 2011, multiple applications of fungicide may be necessary to control rust.

That’s Washington Ag Today.

I’m Lacy Gray with the Ag Information Network of the West.