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diggin’ in ROTATIONAL CROPS Industry Report UI Releases Two New Wheats UICF-Grace and UI Silver ABERDEEN, Idaho—The University of Idaho has released two new hard white winter wheats—UICF-Grace and UI Silver—part of breeder Jianli Chen’s goal of developing more varieties of wheats in this domestically and internationally demanded class. Hard whites provide domestic consumers with visually appealing whole-grain baked products that are free of the bitterness of hard reds, and they’re the international wheat of choice for noodles and buns. Developed by the Idaho Agricultural Experiment Station as IDO 651 and released in October, UICF-Grace is a hard white winter Clearfield wheat targeted to dryland production in the Pacific Northwest. Clearfield wheats resist damage by the grass herbicide imazamox, which controls jointed goatgrass and other important grass weeds. UICF-Grace offers good yield potential and bread-baking quality, along with resistance to stripe rust and dwarf bunt. Relatively low in polyphenol oxidase activity, it makes noodles that stay bright longer and are slower to darken. Because UICF-Grace is tall and tends to lodge under irrigation, Chen recommends it for the Pacific Northwest’s rain-fed—not irrigated—fields. UI Silver, developed as IDO 658, also packages good bread-baking and noodle- making qualities with high yields, low PPO activity and resistance to stripe rust and dwarf bunt. Its release is especially significant because it is one of only a handful of U.S. wheats that carry the SrTmp gene, which conveys resistance to a globally threatening race of stem rust called TTKS. In addition, Chen says genetic examination indicates that UI Silver carries resistance to Fusarium head blight, emerging as a concern in Idaho. Although it’s shorter than UICF-Grace and can be grown under irrigation, UI Silver’s susceptibility to bacterial leaf blight suggests that it, too, is better adapted to dryland than irrigated production in the Intermountain West, Chen says. PG www.potatogrower.com 19