Development and Selection of Organic Wheat Varieties

P. Stephen Baenziger, 

Professor and Nebraska Wheat Growers Presidential 

Chair

Topics• Understanding your system and how to select/breed new varieties

• What to consider when selecting a variety for organic production—what makes you unique and how should breeders respond?

• Understanding the value chain for plant breeding.

Selecting Varieties for Organic Production

• Common themes in organic production:  – Value is added by the organic label (it is a market and a cropping system).

– Need better disease resistance (including seed transmitted diseases)

– Need superior end‐use quality– Protein content is usually not high in organic wheat– Yield is less important than quality. 

• Conventionally developed varieties may do well in organic production, but it is trial and error, not by design. 

Organic Production Systems

• Heavily based upon rotations (not seasons, planting to harvest).

• Diseases– All the regulars (stripe rust, wheat streak mosaic virus, root rots , etc.

– Seed borne fungi—Common bunt (syn. stinking smut)

• How do you source your seed?  Are you buying untreated conventionally produced seed, organic certified seed, or saving your seed? Which of these will be allowed in the future?

What is Your System

• Do you plant after a crop that requires freezing (to kill weeds) before harvest?  – Should you select a very winterhardy variety?– Should you select a variety that recovers well after the winter?

• How will you manage weeds in your system?  – Do you need a weed competitive or taller wheat for your system?

• How do you apply N in your system?

Select the Better Variety

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Grain Protein  %

Grain Yield (bu/a)

Grain Protein vs. Grain Yield

Common Bunt (Stinking Smut)• Devastating disease due to odor—hard 

to even get cattle to eat the grain with molasses.

• It is in our soil and is a seed‐borne disease.  Seed hygiene is critical.

• Infection occurs in the coleoptile before emergence and is favored by cool temperatures.

• Controlled by clean seed, seed treatments, and genetic resistance (rarely used in conventional breeding).

• How do you source your seed?  Are you buying untreated conventionally produced seed or organic seed or saving seed? Which will be allowed in the future?

R S MR

NRPN Data for 2017

The rarity of bunt resistance

Introduce Variation

Segregation and Selection

Evaluation and Release

Better assaysMarker assisted/Genomic Selection

Doubled haploidy

Traditional PlantBreedingAllied Sciences

Choose the right parents. Bunt Resistance/quality

Cropping SystemsBiometryModeling

OrganicEmphasis

Value Chain:1. Organic growers like to save seed.2. Public and private breeding programs are built upon royalties to

sustain their programs.3. Will need to develop a new value chain to support public and private

breeding programs tailored to the organic industry1. Possibly a royalty on the grain sold to mills.

By providing producers & consumers with the best wheat varieties capable of making outstanding products. Produce what you can sell.

A successful variety release program is based on numerous skillsand talented people.