 Hello, and good morning. This is Andrew Green, the Spring Wheat Breeder here at NDSU. I am sorry that we couldn't be together today in a field to talk about some of the things that are going on in the breeding program and some variety testing information from 2019, but I thought this might be an opportunity while we're here on a virtual format to share some things with you that I normally wouldn't be able to share. Were we standing in a field looking at at the plants and so some of the data that we use to make the reports and the presentations that I like to give when I'm out talking to folks, we can share here in this format. Before we do that there are some just kind of general things that are exciting that we think are going on in the breeding program right now that projects that have sort of evolved recently and that are starting to gain some traction that I thought I'd discuss. So the first thing if you've heard me talk at a field day presentation or a winter meeting, you know that finding new ways to select for end-use quality for milling and baking quality is really important in the breeding program. And one of the ways that we've recently started to do that, there are actually a few ways. We have some methods that we're testing that were actually should be published soon that we're starting to use in the breeding program that utilize some simple chemical methods in conjunction with the folks at the quality lab. And we've developed some models that are able to take tests that require very small samples of grain that can be done in early stages of the breeding program on lots and lots of test samples that are able to predict some of the water absorption and mixing traits and the ability for formation of a good loaf of bread. These are expensive tests to do in later generations and they require a lot of seed. So for us to be able to predict these things in say a first-year yield trial where we might be looking at over 5,000 entries would be a huge time saver and could potentially result in some higher quality lines coming out of the program. So we're doing that with some sort of what I would call real chemical tests involving seed small samples. And we're also doing that with molecular markers. And one of the things that we've been able to work on intensively over the last year with the help of Dr. Sintayu Daba who works in our program is a whole genome marker predictions for a number of different traits. So this is not new technology. This is work that's been popular and prevalent in the private sector, particularly with your row crop companies for quite some time. But what we can do is we can take a whole set of molecular markers across the wheat genome. We start with 90,000 of these and we find individual alleles or versions of these genes that are highly correlated with the traits that we're interested in in the program. And we're in the process right now of doing developing models to help select for these traits with a number of different things with ranging from end-use quality to the rust diseases to fusarium headlight pre-harvest sprouting. So these are traits that are difficult for us to get accurate phenotypic data for in the field and having these abilities to predict them from molecular markers doesn't give us a way out of doing that field screening. But what it does is it allows us to reduce the load of how many individuals we're screening and hopefully eliminate some of the poor individuals before we go through those expensive field tests. So the next two bullet points, two of the things that really came out of the focus from last year's unfortunate conditions in the field, we've really had a resurgence in our pre-harvest sprout research. So this was screening that was traditionally done in our breeding program every year for a number of years by Dr. Froberg and we sort of took a little bit of a break from doing this work and what we're finding is that a lot of the NDSU germplasm still has superior pre-harvest sprout resistance when you compare it with other varieties in the marketplace, but we can't lose that edge and so we're developing new ways and we've got a student project. Haley Visto is working on comparing different methods ranging from the genomic predictions through different ways of actually screening the seed and screening heads that we harvest from the field to ensure that we have the best pre-harvest sprout resistance that we can get. Another unfortunate condition from last year that spawns some new research, this is in collaboration with Drs. Lu and Friskop from Plant Pathology. We're really looking hard at screening and directly breeding for bacterial leaf streak resistance. So there's a field project on campus here where we're looking at inoculated nurseries. So we're introducing the bacteria and we're rating those at regular intervals throughout the growing season to be able to have data to provide for the variety trial and uniform nurseries but also to be able to make breeding decisions in a controlled environment for this disease. This is a very tricky pathogen because typically it's very difficult to control and in opportunities before where we've gotten good data from disease expression it's been through luck or through unfortunate circumstances you might say and so what we can do by having this controlled environment on campus is to have a way to manipulate things to prevent some confounding issues like maturity date and the environmental impact of different things like humidity and thunderstorm activity and possibly leaf damage from hail and other things and really get a good pure look at the justice foliar leaf disease which you know we've discovered is probably robbing a lot more yield than most of us have given it credit for for a long time. So I see this being a priority disease and we're doing a lot of the hard work to screen the material both from the varieties and the breeding standpoints and I hope to have more information to share with you during the winter meeting season this year about how those experiments go. So the last thing I'll mention is by now some of you have probably heard about the new wheat variety that's being released we've named it Andy Froberg. This is a variety that will be available to seed growers next year we've actually done something different with this variety we've got it out in a number of locations across the state in larger on-farm trials these are seed producers who are testing out large blocks these are are anywhere from test strips all the way up to 80 acre blocks of this new variety and we're collecting feedback and trying to determine where the best adaptation for this variety is so that the marketing folks can have the best information possible when it's released. So here's the story on Andy Froberg this is a line that has very high end-use quality it's been most similar to Glen which is as most of you know is is the quality standard for spring wheats but with higher yields and better disease resistance so Froberg has good fusarium resistance it has improved rust resistance compared to Glen the bacterial leaf streak is better than most varieties that are out we would consider it moderately resistant to to BLS and a few more bushels a yield than we saw with Glen so you know really corralling those end-use traits of high protein and good milling and baking quality with high yield is difficult and what we've seen in our testing is that the yields of Froberg are similar to what you would find in Barlow in the east and similar to SY Ingmar in the west so in general you would be looking at around three to four bushels greater than what you saw with Glen with straw strength that's similar to Glen a similar plant stature it's not going to it's not very likely to be a heavily lodging wheat like you saw with Barlow or Fowler or Elgin Andy sort of back to a stiffer straw not quite as good as Andy Vit pro but not one that's that we've seen in testing that just goes completely flat so improved lodging improved disease resistance over Glen with similar quality and a couple more bushels of yield and we'll have more data for this to to talk about from these larger on farm trials as we get out of this year's field season and we have it as a name variety in our variety trials and demonstration strips so if you have a chance to visit a site that's got demonstration plots or a statewide variety trial at an REC near you you can ask to see the Andy Froberg and get a better look at it and hopefully with these on farm trials and larger demonstrations in the year before the seed distribution happens it'll also allow your county agents to have a better look and impression of what this variety will do in your area so that when that first year distribution happens it's not as much of a mystery so that's kind of the goal with with the the model we're working with we've been working very closely with NDSU Foundation seed stocks to to get these larger distributions out and produce enough seed in advance of the formal release to be able to get some of this larger scale testing done so those are some of the things that are interesting in the breeding program if you've got questions about anything that we're doing or comments or feedback look me up send me an email give me a call my information is on the NDSU plant sciences website i'd be happy to visit with you thank you