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New White Wheat Variety to Be Released

Posted on: Wednesday, 31 August 2005, 18:00 CDT

Aug. 31--Kansas white-wheat supporters are excited about the prospect of a new public variety being released this fall even as they express disappointment at a slight decrease in acreage harvested in 2005 compared with 2004.

"I'm afraid that we will see another slippage in 2006, based on what I'm hearing from producers," said Vance Ehmke, a white-wheat supporter and seed dealer from Healy, in Lane County.

Kansas is the nation's leading producer of hard white winter wheat with about 419,000 acres harvested in 2004. That was down about 10 percent in 2005.

The state is also the nation's leading producer of hard red winter wheat, the kind most commonly used in bread. Farmers here plant about 10 million acres of hard red wheat annually.

Ehmke said producers are expressing concern about head sprouting and stripe rust problems in white varieties. At the same time, federal incentives to grow white wheat expired this year, and other premium programs are being phased out.

Sprout and rust damage were the chief causes in the drop in production between 2004 and 2005.

"I know those problems did occur," Ehmke said. "But they were not unique to white wheat. There were sprouting and rust problems with a lot of red varieties, too."

On the bright side, there is market demand for hard white wheat, which makes a sweeter, light-colored whole-wheat flour and bakes into a whole-wheat bread that looks and tastes like white bread.

"We're seeing strong demand from major bakers," said Joe Martin, white-wheat researcher and breeder at the Kansas State University research station at Hays. "Since the new food pyramid came out, we've seen demand for whole grains soar."

A revised U.S. Department of Agriculture pyramid emphasizing whole grains was released April 19.

There's also hope on the disease and sprout resistance fronts, Martin said.

A new K-State variety, Danby, was approved for release this year. It has shown rust and sprout resistance comparable to the strongest red varieties and, in test plots, provided better yields than the reds. It is expected to become the dominant white variety in western Kansas in the next few years.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Wichita Eagle, Kan.

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Source: The Wichita Eagle (Wichita, Kan.)

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