Spring Wheat Commercial Variety Evaluation

Objective:         

To evaluate experimental and commercially available spring wheat varieties for agronomic performance in environments representative of northwestern Montana.

Results:           

Significant differences were observed in heading date, percent stripe rust infection, height, lodging, yield, protein, test weight and falling number. Heading date averaged 174 days (June 22) and spanned an eight day period ranging from 170 to 177 days. Despite the application a fungicide, significant stripe rust infection was observed.  The average percent infection on July 15 was 17.6% and ranged from 5.0% for Solano to 31.7% for HRS 3361. The mean height was 33.2 inches and ranged from 28.6 for Cabernet to 37.8 inches for HRS 3530. Lodging was minimal and ranged from 0.0 to 3.7 percent. Grain yield averaged 85.0 bu/A and ranged from 58.7 bu/A for HRS 3361 to 107.2 bu/A for HRS 3504. Protein averaged 15.74% and ranged from 14.71% for HRS 3504 to 16.84% for SY3051-9. Test weight averaged 60.0 lb/bu and ranged from 56.9 lb/bu for SY Coho to 62.4 lb/bu for SY3051-9. Falling number averaged 317.6 seconds, ranging from 178.7 seconds for SY Teton to 489.8 for SY3051-9.

Summary:       

HRS 3504 and SY 3015-8 were the highest yielding varieties. However, HRS 3504 had the lowest protein while SY 3015-8 produced falling numbers that would result in dockage penalties.  This nursery demonstrates that there is tremendous genetic variation for yield and grain quality parameters in experimental private varieties and continual screening is important to identify those wheats that perform best in northwestern Montana.