Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Minutes for WERA-081 Meeting Portland, OR January 26, 2005 Chairperson Deanna Nash; Vice Chairperson Bob Zemetra; Secretary Ed Souza This meeting was held as a subcomponent of the much larger Pacific Northwest Wheat Quality Council and PNW section-American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC) meetings held January 26 to 29th, in Portland Oregon. Meeting was called to order by Russ Karow, Administrative advisor for WERA-081 at 8:30 am. Brief, verbal state reports were given as noted below. Additional details from several states can be found in the documentation provided elsewhere in the report on this meeting. Idaho Ed Souza placed three Aberdeen breeding lines into the quality council testing. IDO573 and IDO575 are tall rain-fed winter wheat cultivars adapted to southern Idaho and northern Utah and are targeted to replace Weston. IDO597 is a hard white spring wheat targeted to replace Lolo. IDO597 will be proposed for release in 2005 under the name Lochsa. Two fertility-irrigation studies were reported on: 1) soft white fertility timing suggested that best yields and quality were obtained with top-dressing at jointing and 2) reduction of irrigation in drought years was most effective at maintaining yield and quality if spread through the season rather than being imposed at the end of the season. The earlier farmers know they must reduce water use and act on that knowledge, the smaller effects of those water shortages will be. Bob Zemetra with the UI Moscow program indicated that severe sprouting this harvest prevented the entry of new lines into the quality council. In the past year Dune soft white winter wheat was released for irrigated production in southern Idaho, with higher yield and better stripe rust resistance that Brundage. Three soft white winter lines are in seed production 220407A, 16004A, and 19804A. All three wheats are notable for their superior soft wheat quality as measured by the solvent retention capacity test. Washington Washington Wheat Commission has developed a Wheat Foundation to promote and market niche and high quality cultivars developed by WSU. WWC also strongly supports the National Stripe Rust Initiative. Kim Campbell reported that releases from WSU and ARS programs at Pullman are fairing well with stripe rust resistance. These include Chukar club, Finch common white winter, Masamai common white winter, and Louise soft white spring common wheat. They also have a joint release developed by the three breeding programs at Washington that is a hard red winter with high protein. The USDA-ARS Pullman Wheat and Barley Genotyping Center has begun operation under the supervision on Kim Campbell and the facilitation of Lynn Little. B-K. Baik has been hired as a faculty member by WSU to replace Brady Carter for breeding program quality evaluation. Oregon ORCF102 will be released by OSU as a Clearfield soft white winter wheat for the Pacific Northwest. OSU is planning to release the soft white winter wheat OR9801757 for licensed identity preserved marketing based on its improved soft wheat quality. OSU is currently in a public comment period about its licensed release. Debra Jones with Gilliam County Grain Growers expects their quality laboratory to be operational in September 2005. Montana MT1159CL was released and licensed by MSU to Westbred LLC. MSU has also entered into the PNW Wheat Quality Council winter wheat breeding lines targeted to replace the sawfly resistant winter wheat Rampart. Private Breeding Companies Operating across Western States - Westbred LLC has released the spring wheats Solano (DA990-229) to replace Express hard red spring, WPB 528 soft white winter wheat to replace WPB 470, BZ998-447WP is intended for release as a new hard white spring resistant to Hessian fly, and Alzeda was released as a new durum wheat for use by Pasta Montana. Fossum Seeds is evaluating spring wheats in the Bellingham WA and Corvallis OR areas. Agripro recently revised their relationship with Syngenta and is now owned by that corporation. US Wheat Associates Portland Wheat Marketing Laboratory (WMC) WMC has three marquis projects in the past year: 1) Continuation of the Asian Products Collaborative, a program to provide US white wheats to Pacific Rim customers for use in Asian noodles and steam breads. 2) Inspection of wheat cargos for Tilletia controversa (Dwarf bunt) teliospores as part of an initiative to expand shipments to China; China has strict regulations regarding dwarf bunt contamination of wheat and barley. 3) Expanded training programs in wheat quality for elevator operators and wheat growers. USDA-ARS Pullman Western Wheat Quality Laboratory (WWQL) Western states producing soft white wheats have participated in the Overseas Variety Analysis sponsored by US Wheat and facilitated by Doug Engle with the WWQL in Pullman. Engle summarized the results of the OVA since the WERA 081 meeting in Hawaii. The key conclusions of the meta-analysis of the OVA was that ranking for quality between domestic evaluations and international users of soft wheat generally correlate. Finch, Brundage, and most club wheats were consistently ranked as good quality by both domestic and international users. Weatherford was consistently rated as poor by domestic and international wheat end-users. The exception to the general agreement of the two end-user groups was the cultivar Jubilee which is rated highly by domestic end-users and moderate to poor by international end-users. The differences may relate to the relative gluten strength and water absorption characteristics of Jubilee. Russ Karow provided a brief administrative advisor update at the conclusion of the meeting. Part of WERA-081 activities included the proposal to the PNW Section of the AACC for Quality Targets for the Soft White Wheat class. That proposal was debated in the afternoon session of the PNW AACC Section. The proposal adopted by the PNW Section is attached to these minutes and a brief summary of the discussion is appended below. San Diego, CA was tentatively selected as the site for next years WERA-081 meeting, with the date set for the Thursday of the Plant and Animal Genome Meetings. Doug Engle is responsible for identifying necessary local arrangements. The meeting adjourned at noon and reconvened on January 28th for tours of the Kraft bakery and Port of Portland. On Friday January 29th, a sub-committee WERA-081 worked at the US Wheat Marketing Laboratory in Portland to complete the bread bake ring test of PNW research bake laboratories. This initiative was begun in the last year to confirm equivalencies of protocols in PNW laboratories evaluating wheat cultivars from public and private breeding programs. Statistical analysis of the ring-test will be presented to the Soft Wheat Technical Committee of the American Association of Cereal Chemists in their annual meeting this fall. Summary of Discussion by PNW Section of the AACC Concerning Adoption of WERA-081 Proposal for PNW Soft Wheat Quality Targets Proposal was adopted by consensus among those present Points in Favor of the Targets 1) The targets were based of recorded range and means observed at the ARS Western Wheat Quality Laboratory (WWQL) for desirable quality soft white winter wheats and club wheats with particular emphasis on test data generated during the normal operation of the laboratory. 2) The values had included the discussions of members of WERA-081 over the past year and had been modified to reflect those comments, particularly the inclusion of new tests such as the solvent retention capacity test 3) The targets provide wheat commissions and US Wheat Associates with a marketing tool of defined standards and commitment to enforce quality standards upon the wheat breeding teams. Points of Concern for the Targets 1) Technical values for target tests are laboratory-dependent (different laboratories obtain correlated but different absolute values for the same grain samples). The values generated by the WWQL are atypical for other western laboratories including the Portland US Wheat Marketing Laboratory and may cause problems with interpretation of wheat quality from other laboratories relative to the targets. 2) Participants, both of the sub-committee that developed the standards and other WERA-081 members, were uncertain of how best to apply the targets. That is, are these numbers centered values for future cultivars, minimums to be exceeded, or general guidelines for the good of the cause? 3) The target values have ranges based on the standard deviation of known check cultivars. However the target values do not have a desired directionality (which are desired greater or lesser values relative to the target?). Nor are weights attached to the targets to provide guidance as to which values are more important than others. The targets were adopted because of the common concern for marketing and the desire of the PNW wheat industry to provide the perception of enforced discipline upon the PNW variety development programs. The points of concern were taken as points to be addressed as the targets are used and developed. Report respectively submitted by, Edward Souza Wheat Breeding and Genetics University of Idaho

Colorado State University Two new hard red winter wheat cultivars were released in fall 2004. This first of these, named 'Hatcher', combines high dryland yields in eastern Colorado and the west-central Great Plains, resistance to Biotype 1 Russian wheat aphid, and improved milling and baking quality relative to other available Russian wheat aphid resistant cultivars. Hatcher was selected from the crosses and backcrosses 'Yuma'/PI 372129//'TAM-200'/3/4*Yuma/4/KS91H184/'Vista'. Across 22 trial locations of the dryland Colorado UVPT (2001-2004), Hatcher had lower yield than 'Trego' but higher yield than all other entries in the trials. In the Southern Regional Performance Nursery (SRPN), Hatcher was the second highest yielding entry across the High Plains region in both 2003 (seven locations) and 2004 (nine locations). Hatcher has shown excellent milling properties and above-average bread baking properties. The second of the new releases, named 'Bond CL', combines resistance to Biotype 1 Russian wheat aphid, the Clearfield* herbicide tolerance gene, and excellent bread baking quality. Bond CL is a doubled-haploid line developed using the wheat x maize hybridization method from the cross 'Yumar'//TXGH12588-120*4/FS2. Across 14 trial locations of the dryland Colorado UVPT (2002-2004), Bond CL had lower yield than 'Above' Clearfield* wheat and Hatcher but higher yield than all other entries in the trials. Bond CL has shown much improved baking quality characteristics relative to Above. In spring 2004, we purchased a Foss NIRSystems Model 6500 scanning monochromator. Our goal with the Foss 6500 is to develop and implement flour and whole-grain calibrations for selection in the breeding program. We are currently targeting calibrations for test weight, single kernel characteristics, and dough mixing strength measurements. As part of this project in 2004, we hired Phil Williams (formerly Ag Canada-Winnipeg) to consult on NIR calibration development and monitoring of laboratory error; we utilized the NIRs 6500 for whole-grain NIR analysis in between harvest and planting in August using several calibrations provided by Foss; we implemented a systematic check sample testing system to monitor error associated with our procedures; we purchased a Brabender Farinograph E (50 gram model) to facilitate development of NIR calibrations for mixing time and stability. Montana State University Approximately 2.8 million acres of spring wheat were seeded in 2004. Growing conditions were better than in the past several years, with spring wheat yield levels approaching a long-term average. McNeal maintained its position as the leading spring wheat variety for the eighth year, although acreage declined due to increased production of other varieties. The most prominent of these was Reeder. Objectives for the breeding program include high yield potential, resistance to the wheat stem sawfly, high protein, and good bread-making quality. Two new varieties were grown on several hundred acres for seed production. The first of these is Outlook, which is notable for high yield potential and resistance to the Russian wheat aphid. Outlook has grain protein percentage approximately 0.2% less than McNeal based on 40 location years of testing. Gluten strength of Outlook is average relative to other hard red spring wheat varieties, and lower than McNeal. A second new variety is named Choteau. Choteau has protein levels approximately 0.5% higher than McNeal, and is resistant to the wheat stem sawfly. Gluten strength of Choteau is similar to other hard red spring wheat varieties, and weaker than McNeal. There were 1.63 million acres of winter wheat harvested in Montana in 2004. Average yield was 41 bu/a for a total production of 66.8 million bushels. Leading varieties were Rampart (28% of acreage) followed by Neeley (16%), Tiber (9%), Morgan (8%), and Vanguard (8%). The winter wheat program emphasizes on-farm productivity characteristics and quality characteristics to compete in a global market place. Specific objectives include productivity, adaptation (cold tolerance, maturity, stress tolerance), pest resistance (wheat stem sawfly, wheat streak mosaic virus, stem rust), and dual-purpose end-use quality. End-use quality goals are high grain protein and gluten strength, high flour extraction and low ash content, good dough mixing and bread baking quality, and superior noodle color and textural characteristics. One of our major areas of research is milling quality of hard and soft wheat with a focus upon the wheat puroindolines. We have generated transgenic lines of wheat that vary with respect to puroindoline a and/or b. We recently completed a milling and baking study of the initial group of genotypes and found that puroindoline content impacts nearly all milling and baking quality traits with negative impacts found upon loaf volume in wheat with very high levels of puroindoline. Some of the questions left unanswered by the current study are being addressed with new populations of wheat. The current research studies will address to what degree each of the puroindolines limit grain hardness and whether it is possible to create super soft wheat having increased dosage of puroindolines. An initial research paper on this topic was published that demonstrated that additional puroindoline doses added by chromosome segment substitutions do indeed decrease grain hardness. We have conducted similar experiments in which we have transgenically added pina and/or pinb to soft wheat. This work has found that while both pins limit grain softness, the addition of pinb has a greater effect than does the addition of pina. Our second research area focuses on increasing agronomic yield without sacrificing protein content or quality. We have found, not surprisingly, that increasing yield by increasing seed starch biosynthetic rates is highly influenced by the environment. Oregon State University Joining ORCF-101, a second Clearfield line was released in the fall of 2004, ORCF-102. ORCF-102 was derived from the cross Madsen/FS-4//Weatherford and has superior tolerance to root diseases, particularly Cephalosporium stripe and Strawbreaker footrot. ORCF-102 may be preferred by growers that need a CLEARFIELD variety for no-till or reduced tillage management situations. Eighteen seed companies have now been licensed to produce and sell seed of OSU CLEARFIELD varieties in the Pacific Northwest. An estimated 250,000 acres of ORCF-101 were planted by wheat growers in fall, 2004. The soft white winter wheat selection OR9801757 was advanced to Foundation seed increase for possible release in 2005. OR9801757 is noted for its superior milling and baking quality, low grain protein content, and exceptionally soft grain texture. It also has a superior yield record in the drier production areas of Sherman and Gilliam counties of North Central Oregon. Because of its superior end-use quality, OR9801757 presents a unique opportunity to develop an identity preserved production and marketing program for the Oregon wheat industry. Foote was released by OSU in 1998, targeted for the Willamette valley because of its superior resistance to Septoria leaf blotch. In 2004, production fields of Foote were sprayed up to three times with fungicide to control Stripe rust. Prior to 2004, the soft white winter wheat variety Foote was highly resistant to stripe rust. The experimental data and field observations indicate that Foote has seedling, or major gene, resistance that is not effective against this new race of stripe rust University of Idaho During the past year, we completed the release of Jerome hard red spring wheat, which was evaluated by WERA-081 and PNW Quality Council in 2004. We submitted three breeding lines for evaluation to WERA-081 and the wheat quality council. IDO575 and IDO573 are tall rain-fed hard winter wheats targeted to replace Bonneville. IDO575 is unusually tall and is of particular interest to growers in low rainfall production systems where good soil emergence is required. Both IDO573 and IDO575 are earlier and easier to thresh than Bonneville with similar milling and baking characteristics to Bonneville. IDO597, a hard white spring wheat, was the third breeding line submitted to WERA-081 for review. It was paired in the testing with Westbred 936 because of its bread baking quality. IDO597 also has good noodle quality.

Colorado State University Haley, S.D., F.B. Peairs, C.B. Walker, J.B. Rudolph, and T.L Randolph. 2004. Occurrence of a new Russian wheat aphid biotype in Colorado. Crop Sci. 44:1589-1592. Haley, S.D., J.S. Quick, J.J. Johnson, F.B. Peairs, J.A. Stromberger, S.R. Clayshulte, B.L. Clifford, J.B. Rudolph, O.K. Chung, and B.W. Seabourn. 2004. Registration of 'Ankor' wheat. Crop Sci. 44:1025-1026. Yu, L., S.D. Haley, J. Perret, and M. Harris. 2004. Comparison of wheat flours grown at different locations for their antioxidant properties. Food Chem. 86:11-16. University of Idaho Guttieri, M.J., C. Becker, and E. Souza. 2004. Application of wheat meal solvent retention capacity tests within soft wheat populations. Cereal Chem. 81: 261-266. Guttieri, M.J., D. Bowen, J.A. Dorsch, E. Souza, and V. Raboy. 2004. Identification and characterization of a low phytic acid wheat. Crop Sci. 44: 418-424. Souza, E.J., J.M. Martin, M.J. Guttieri, K. OBrien, D.K. Habernicht, S.P. Lanning, G.R. Carlson, and L.E. Talbert. 2004. Influence of genotype, environment, and nitrogen management on spring wheat quality. Crop Sci. 44:425-432. Souza, E.J., M.J. Guttieri, and R. McLean. 2004. Registration of Gary wheat. Crop Sci. 44: 1476-1477. Souza, E.J., M.J. Guttieri, and R. McLean. 2004. Registration of Moreland wheat. Crop Sci. 44: 1478-1479. Souza, E.J., M.J. Guttieri, and K. OBrien. 2004. Registration of DW wheat. Crop Sci 44: 1475-1476. Souza, E.J., M.J. Guttieri, K. OBrien, and B. Brown. 2004. Registration of Alturas wheat. Crop Sci 44: 1477-1478. Montana State University Blake, N.K., J.D. Sherman, J. Dvorak, and L.E. Talbert. 2004. Genome-specific primer sets for starch biosynthesis genes in wheat. Theor. Appl. Genet. 109:1295-1302. Cook, J.P., D.M. Wichman, J.M. Martin, P.L. Bruckner, and L.E. Talbert. 2004. Identification of microsatellite markers associated with a stem solidness locus in wheat. Crop Sci. 44:1397-1402. Dyck, J.A., M.A. Matus-Cadiz, P. Hucl, L. Talbert, T. Hunt, J.P. Duboc, H. Nass, G. Clayton, J. Dodd, and J. Quick. 2004. Agronomic performance of hard red spring wheat lines sensitive and insensitive to photoperiodism. Crop Sci. 44:1976-1981. Hogg, A.C., T. Sripo, B. Beecher, J.M. Martin, and M.J. Giroux. 2004. Wheat Puroindolines Interact to Form Friabilin and Control Wheat Grain Hardness. Theoretical and Applied Genetics 108:1089-1097. Jukanti, A.K., P.L. Bruckner, and A.M. Fischer. 2004. Evaluation of wheat polyphenol oxidase genes. Cereal Chem. 81:481-485. Lanning, S.K., G.R. Carlson, D. Nash, D.M. Wichman, K.D. Kephart, R.N. Stougaard, G.D. Kushnak, J.L. Eckhoff, W.E. Grey and L.E. Talbert. 2004. Registration of Choteau wheat. Crop Sci .44:2264-2265. Martin, J.M., J.E. Berg, A.M. Fischer, A.K. Jukanti, K.D. Kephart, G.D. Kushnak, D. Nash, and P.L. Bruckner. 2005. Divergent selection for polyphenol oxidase and its influence on agronomic, milling, bread, and Chinese raw noodle quality traits. Crop Sci. 45:(in press). Martin, J.M., L.E. Talbert, D.K. Habernicht, S.P. Lanning, J.D. Sherman, G. Carlson, and M.J. Giroux. 2004. Reduced amylose effects on bread and Chinese noodle quality. Cereal Chem. 81:188-193. Meyer, F.D., E.D. Smidansky, B. Beecher, T.W. Greene, and M. J. Giroux. 2004. The maize Sh2r6hs ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase (AGP) subunit confers enhanced AGP properties in transgenic wheat (Triticum aestivum). Plant Science 899-911. See, D.R., M. Giroux, and B. Gill. 2004. Effect of multiple copies of puroindoline genes on grain softness. Crop Sci. 2004 44(4): p. 1248-1253. Sherman, J.D., L. Yan, L. Talbert, and J. Dubcovsky. 2004. A PCR marker for growth habit in common wheat based on allelic variation at the Vrn-A1 gene. Crop Sci. 44:1832-1838. Souza, E.J., J.M. Martin, M. Guttieri, K. OBrien, D.K. Habernicht, S.P. Lanning, Carlson, G., and L.E. Talbert. 2004. Relative influence of genotype, environment, and nitrogen management on spring wheat quality. Crop Sci. 44:425-432. Oregon State University Graybosch, R.A., C.J. Peterson, and O.K. Chung. 2004. Registration of N95L11881 and 97L9521 strong gluten 1BL.1RS wheat germplasms. Crop Science. 44:1490-1491. Graybosch, R.A., C.J. Peterson, D.R. Porter, and O.K. Chung. 2004. Registration of N96l9970 greenbug resistant wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) germplasm. Crop Science. 44:1492.