News

Missouri wheat group in the works

Although Missouri is the top state for soft red winter wheat and 13th in overall wheat production it has no wheat growers association, but there are now efforts to start one.

Richard Arnett, director of the Missouri Crop Improvement Association, has connected with some farmers who’ve been working on private wheat research to form a state grower’s group.

Arnett says, unlike corn and soybeans, a lot of new wheat varieties come out of the public sector for wheat but funding is drying up, “A lot of the other states have checkoffs and things like that, that will build a base level of funding support for wheat variety development programs, things like that. And we don’t have that in Missouri which is unfortunate because we’ve got one of the leading experts when it comes to wheat development in the U.S.”

She’s Dr. Anne McKendry with the University of Missouri, “And she’s actually one of the wheat developers that leads the national effort to screen and find new germplasm for resistance to fusarium head blight which most producers would know as head scab.”

Arnett tells Brownfield there’s a meeting scheduled next month to get the wheels in motion for a Missouri wheat association.