The president of Winter Cereals Canada is confident the elimination of kernel visual distinguishability as registration criteria for winter wheat will re-invigorate winter wheat breeding programs on the prairies.
Up until August 1, 2008 kernel visual distinguishability or KVD was used as a visual tool for determining the quality characteristics of wheat which meant that, to be licensed in a specific wheat class, the new line had to look like other wheats registered in that class.
Winter Cereals Canada president Garth Butcher says the elimination of that restriction is a real break through.
There’s been real difficulty in the past six to eight years in getting any new winter wheat varieties registered in that they’ve just look too much like red spring wheat and so registration was disallowed for that reason because they weren’t visually distinguishable so it meant a lot of breeding material was basically set aside and couldn’t be introduced for registration.
Those were varieties that could, depending on their specifics, could be higher yielding, have more disease resistance, what ever characteristic but they had to be set aside because they couldn’t be distinguished, in this case, from red spring wheat and there was concern about mixing in the system that it could not be registered.
Now with this change it would mean that improved varieties of winter wheat could be introduced even though they did look like red spring wheat.
Butcher says winter wheat breeders were discouraged because of the virtual impossibility that what they were introducing was going to be registered because it looked too much like red spring wheat.
He says that has changed now and he expects a new enthusiasm for breeding winter wheat.
He says lines that had previously been rejected can now be re-introduced and he’s is confident the change will speed up the development of additional lines.
Source: Farmscape.Ca
