Posts Tagged: wheat

New funding to study wheat and forest genetics

Roger Beachy, the director of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, was at UC Davis yesterday to announce grants for agricultural research amounting to $40 million, calling them "significant investments," said a UC Davis news release.

Together with UC Davis officials, Beachy announced that:

• Wheat geneticist Jorge Dubcovsky will receive $25 million to develop new varieties of wheat and barley. Dubcovsky and his 55 university and USDA colleagues will focus on biological and environmental stresses to wheat that are caused, at least in part, by global climate change.
  
  
• Forest geneticist David Neale will receive $14.6 million to head a team that will work to sequence the genomes of loblolly pine and two other conifers. Neale and his research colleagues plan to accelerate breeding efforts for fast-growing varieties of these trees to enhance their use as feedstocks for biofuels and biopower.

"We look forward to the practical solutions for agriculture and for the environment that will arise from these collaborative projects," UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi said at the press conference.

A story about the grants written by Rick Daysog of the Sacramento Bee said they come as UC Davis has stepped up efforts to attract research grants following Katehi's appointment as chancellor in 2009. During its fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, the university received a record $679 million in research grants.

Left to right: David Neale, Jorge Dubcovsky, Linda Katehi, Roger Beachy, Neal Van Alfen.

Photo: John Stumbos

Rainy season was good for valley wheat growers

The rainy season of 2009-10 was good news for San Joaquin Valley wheat farmers, according to an article in Western Farm Press.

It was the wettest growing season in the past five years, wrote reporter Harry Cline. Central Valley dryland producers are happy; coastal and Delta farmers, however, got too much rain, which cut early production.

Cline gathered the information at a UC Cooperative Extension cereal field day in Tulare County. At the field day, UCCE farm advisor Steve Wright said the rain saved growers two 4-inch irrigations.

“That is huge — saving 8 inches of water,” Wright was quoted.

One concern that arises in wet weather is stripe rust, but it caused more damage in triticale than wheat this year.

“All PCAs and growers were watching for stripe rust this year since it was projected to be a bad rust year. There were hits, but it never took off and blew up like it did in 2003,” Wright was quoted in the article. “Newer varieties still have pretty good resistance and some fungicides went on, but overall it was not that bad. Even in the Sacramento Valley, stripe rust did not take off as expected this year.”

Wheat foliage damaged by stripe rust.

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