08/28/06 Wheat CAP; coordinated project for wheat

Farm and Ranch August 28, 2006 Early this year the USDA announced an award of five million dollars over four years for applied wheat genome research. Jim Peterson, wheat breeder at Oregon State University, says the Coordinated Agricultural Project for wheat, or CAP as it is now called, is a unique opportunity. Peterson: "But what's important is it is bringing breeders and geneticists together from all over the country. There are 17 different programs involved in the grant research, where we are going to be identifying molecular markers that can tag important genes for disease resistance, for end-use quality, for agronomic characteristics of our varieties, and we can share that information among all our programs in the United States. So programs that are developing markers in Kansas or Nebraska, we'll have access to that same information like they will have access to information we develop on stripe rust resistance, on kernel texture, and other things." Peterson says this will make wheat breeding much more efficient. Peterson: "Instead of growing thousands and thousands of lines to try and identify that perfect combination, we now can pin-point key genes that we need and move them more efficiently into the backgrounds and the varieties we are already working with. So, some real power in molecular genetic technologies that we just cannot meet in a field program. Marrying these is going to be real exciting for the future." I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.