Agricultural News
OSU's Brett Carver is Excited to be part of a Monumental Time for the OSU Wheat Improvement Team
Tue, 17 May 2022 12:04:07 CDT
Farm Director KC Sheperd visited with OSU's Dr. Brett Carver with the Oklahoma State University Wheat Improvement Team during the Lahoma Wheat Field Day on May 13th. Carver talked about different wheat varieties and some exciting things coming for the OSU Wheat Improvement Team.
Carver said differences he has seen in different areas during wheat variety tours come down to how much water the wheat received. The hot and dry winds are not helping the lack of water in some places, Carver added.
"We are still seeing some amazing wheat considering the conditions," Carver said. "I have seen some really poor wheat even in our breeding nurseries that just didn't have maybe one critical rainfall."
Otherwise, Carver said he thinks we would have cleared the fence. We wouldn't be in an 80-bushel range, he added, but we would be in a very decent yield range.
Carver went on to talk about achieving better quality, more protein, and adding those together.
"We want to add those together and keep the yield," Carver said. "We don't want to have any sacrifice of yield and we don't have to. That is the beauty of this."
Carver said keeping the yield potential will take them places with quality that they have never been before. With varieties of wheat such as Baker's Ann and Butler's Gold, unique levels of quality are present, Carver added, but it is a balanced type of quality.
"We have really good strength, and we have really good extensibility, which is what we need to make a loaf of bread and other bread products," Carver said.
With good protein and water absorption in grasp, Carver said it is time to focus on one at a time.
"It is a key part of part of meeting a demand for a different industry today," Carver said. "It's working a lot harder and a lot faster when we add the dough. When we add that dough strength and build up beyond what we have now and the exceptional varieties like Bakers Anne, we are in a different place, and that is where we are today."
Carver said changing the value of wheat was not easy. It was a ten-year process, and the wheat commission and Oklahoma Genetics, Inc. aided in the process, he added.
"There is no downtime- I can tell you that," Carver said. "Each and every year we do something different to get from point A to Z."
Carver said they started with crosses in 2012 where they worked with certain genetic backgrounds they thought would be a good receptor for a glutenin, or gluten protein, that is already in the Snowmass wheat variety.
"Now we need to redistribute that protein in other places," Carver said. "We did get lucky. We chose the right backgrounds."
Not always, Carver said, but enough right backgrounds were selected that they were successful in creating a background with a unique level of dough strength thanks to the protein that was present in the Snowmass wheat variety.
"It is the combination of those two factors," Carver said. "It is the background plus the unique gluten protein, or what we call the glutenin, that made this magic work. It doesn't always work."
In the drought, Carver said he was pleased with how combining traits in experimental varieties went.
"We are not losing on drought-stressed tolerance," Carver said. "Fortunately, relying on a background for a donor, like Snowmass, which comes from the high plains, from the eastern part of Colorado, it has its days of drought-stressed tolerance as well."
This is a monumental time for the program, Carver said, because they have never been here before.
"I have never had the conversations this deep into the industry before now," Carver said. "Having those conversations allows us to make better decisions."
Carver said some of those decisions had to do with the quality characteristics that we had to select.
"I didn't have that input ten years ago," Carver said. "We have that now, and so now we can make decisions we have never made before, and it puts us in a place we have never been before. That is why I call this a monumental time."
Click the LISTEN BAR below to hear more from OSU's Brett Carver on progress with the OSU Wheat Breeding Program.
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