A winter wheat breeder with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada expects prairie farmers to look at AC Emerson, a new fusarium head blight resistant red winter wheat, as a suitable replacement for CDC Falcon when that variety is re-classified in 2014.
AC Emerson, developed at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, offers good leaf stem and stripe rust resistance and it’s the first wheat variety in western Canada of any class to be rated resistant to fusarium head blight.
In co-op trials in southeastern Manitoba, AC Emerson yielded very similarly to the two predominant varieties in that region, CDC Falcon and CDC Buteo.
Dr. Rob Graf, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and a winter wheat breeder for western Canada, notes CDC Falcon is being reclassified as a general purpose wheat in 2014 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 eastern prairies what we found is Emerson is equal to CDC Falcon so there’s really no disadvantage to growing it and, in addition to having yields that are comparable, it achieves about a one percent higher protein content in the grain so that’s a big plus for this variety.
One thing that farmers should be aware of and certainly one of the reasons that CDC Falcon was so popular in the Red River Valley is that Falcon was a really quite a short statured variety.
Emerson I would consider more an intermediate height variety.
It’s about four inches taller than Falcon so it’s not a lot taller but it is a little bit taller but key in all this as well is that it has the same excellent lodging resistance that Falcon has as well so it won’t be falling over.
Certified seed for AC Emerson is expected to be available this fall.
