A winter wheat breeder with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada expects western Canada’s first fusarium head blight resistant winter wheat to be of particular interest to grain growers in Manitoba’s Red River Valley.
AC Emerson, a new Canada western red winter wheat developed at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, offers a very good quality package, good leaf stem and stripe rust resistance and it’s the first variety in western Canada of any class to be rated resistant to fusarium head blight.
Dr. Rob Graf, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and a winter wheat breeder for western Canada, expects Emerson to become the new standard.
Based on the co-op trial’s, those results indicated that the best adaptation was in fact in the eastern prairie region so we’re talking Red River Valley Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan where it yielded very similarly to the two predominant varieties in that region, those being CDC Falcon and CDC Buteo.
Now, at the same time, because the Red River Valley does tend to be that area of western Canada that is particularly concerned about fusarium head blight, that’s where the disease is the most severe, I think farmers will be particularly interested in growing this variety.
The other thing that makes it quite interesting for producers is that the variety CDC Falcon is being reclassified as a general purpose wheat in 2014 and so there’s been some real concern by farmers that they won’t be able to get as high a price for their CDC Falcon.
In the case of Emerson, Emerson has a much higher protein content, it mills better and so on and is fully eligible for the red winter grades.
Dr. Graf notes the marketer of the new variety, Canterra Seeds expects to have certified seed available this fall.
