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NDSU Releases Faller Hard Red Spring Wheat

Faller, a new hard red spring wheat variety, has been developed and released by the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station.

Faller, a new hard red spring wheat variety, has been developed and released by the North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station, according to Al Schneiter, North Dakota State University Department of Plant Sciences chair.

Faller is expected to be best adapted to eastern and central North Dakota, western Minnesota and northeast South Dakota.

“Based on yield advantage and current wheat prices, if Faller were to replace just 35 percent of the acreage of Briggs and Alsen in the eastern half of North Dakota, it would generate an additional $16 million in annual income for North Dakota wheat producers in those parts of the state,” Schneiter says.

Faller has parentage that includes Amidon, Stoa, Kitt and an NDSU experimental line derived from Sumai 3, a Chinese spring wheat that is the source of the fusarium head blight (scab) resistance in Alsen, according to Mohamed Mergoum, NDSU wheat breeder.

According to NDSU plant pathologists, Faller has a level of scab resistance similar to Alsen. It also has a relatively low DON level. Faller has an excellent leaf disease resistance package, particularly stem and leaf rust.

Faller has excellent yield potential under more optimum growing conditions. In three years of tests in eastern and central North Dakota, Faller yielded an average of 12.7 bushels per acre more than Alsen and 9.7 bushels per acre more than Briggs. In trials at drier locations in western North Dakota, Faller yielded less than Alsen, Howard, Steele-ND and Reeder.

Faller is a semidwarf line with maturity and straw strength about equal to Alsen. It has slightly lower protein and test weight than recent NDSU releases, but is still in a very acceptable range, Mergoum says. The milling and baking parameters are good.

“Faller is named after Jim Faller, who had been a technician in the NDSU hard red spring wheat breeding program for 29 years,” Schneiter says. “Jim, originally from Dickinson, lost a courageous battle with cancer in August 2006.”

The North Dakota Wheat Commission provided some of the funding for the development of Faller.


NDSU Agriculture Communication

Source:Al Schneiter, (701) 231-8137, albert.schneiter@ndsu.edu
Source:Mohamed Mergoum, (701) 231-8478, mohamed.mergoun@ndsu.edu
Editor:Rich Mattern, (701) 231-6136, richard.mattern@ndsu.edu
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