At the Oklahoma Genetics Inc. Meeting in Oklahoma City, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays had the chance to catch up with regents professor and wheat genetics chair in the Oklahoma State University Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Dr. Brett Carver.
In recent years, High Cotton has been the OSU Wheat Variety most sought after and Dr. Carver says that even with a new wheat variety about to be released, it remains high on his list of favorites. “We had enough testing of it before we released it to know that this was a legitimate variety for much of Oklahoma and southward.”
He was pleased with last year’s crop saying that although it was dinged by strike rust, it fought off the fungus and produced a good yield. With genetic toughness and a high yield ceiling, the variety is well suited for both grazing and grain-only production.
It was improving tenacity that led to the development of the new variety which has been dubbed Orange Blossom CL+. “We have the official release to move forward with the commercialization of it,” Dr. Carver said. “We have even named it, but farmers may still see its experimental name out there: OK198417C. This is a Doublestop CL+ derivative; it is about sixty-six percent Doublestop.”
The new variety encompasses the tenacity and acid soil tolerance of Doublestop. “It is a good, tough wheat variety that we have not been able to take advantage of because it was Clearfield and I wanted to keep the Clearfield trait in Clearfield germplasm. I finally said, ‘Okay. We are going to start breeding more with Doublestop, not just as a Clearfield donor, but as a wheat background donor.’ However, the OK198417C is still Clearfield. It just turned out that way. We were looking for a non-Clearfield Doublestop, and didn’t find it.”
The Clearfield system is a non-genetically modified crop herbicide tolerance technology and not a genetically modified organism (GMO). As the name implies, two-gene Clearfield wheat varieties have two copies of the gene that confers resistance to imidazolinone herbicides.
Initially, back in 2018-2019, it was the impressive yields of OK198417C that caught Dr. Carver’s attention. Then, after a strong blight of stripe rust and leaf rust in 2021, he noticed how unaffected the variety was by those issues. Then, in 2024, stripe rust appeared earlier in the season than usual, and the new variety still resisted it well.
“This one really stood out,” he said. “It is a lot like OK Corral in terms of its reaction – very strong – but I think this one is even better than OK Corral because it can take stripe rust earlier in its development before it turned into heading, which is really the critical period in which that stripe rust resistance kicks in. It doesn’t wait for heading to kick in. That is a game-changer for me. So, if it has a yield, if it has everything else we want, let’s put it out there for farmers to enjoy!”
Roughly 20 seed producers are currently growing Orange Blossom CL+ and Dr. Carver expects there to be 2000 bushels of foundation seed available in the fall of 2025 – so long as the 40 bushels per acre yield is accomplished. Certified seed should become commercially available to farmers in the fall of 2026.
While he expects Orange Blossom CL+ to exceed Doublestop CL+ in performance, he knows that many producers will choose to stick with Doublestop early on. “We are talking about a 14 percent yield average across every possible environment that includes usually with no fungicide, so maybe you won’t get that 14 percent yield bump with a fungicide, but for those who don’t want to mess with a fungicide, this provides the protection they need to get that yield up that you are just not going to get with Doublestop.”
Another positive that Orange Blossom inherited from Doublestop is its impressive test weight advantage. “I was okay in dropping the quality ceiling down a little bit because Doublestop’s was so high. I think we still have good quality. It is just not as good as Doublestop, but I was really glad to see test weight hang on like it has.”
