Project Number: 3625-21000-056-18
Project Type: Specific Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Mar 28, 2012
End Date: Aug 31, 2014

Objective:
1) Contribute populations to and provide testing sites/evaluations for a joint experiment to catalog germplasm for organic production; 2) Cooperate in a breeding effort concentrating on the upper Midwest; 3) take the lead in breeding/evaluation for altered amino acid content and nitrogen utilization; 4) participate in USTN trials and pre-trials; 5) cooperate in on-farm evaluations and stress nurseries.

Approach:
Conduct joint trials using locations in the upper Midwest, and using the improved breeding populations that each breeder has developed. In year one, each breeder will submit approximately ten populations, thereafter the best performing populations will be retested while additional populations from the breeders’ programs or acquired elsewhere are evaluated. Identify and test superior parents on a somewhat continuous basis, so there is a constant flow of our best hybrids to farmers and seed companies for testing and increase. Make numerous crosses between parents with desired traits, hybridizing those crosses with multiple testers, examining the hybrid test crosses in yield trials and thereby identifying the best crosses to work with, then selfing the best of those families to the S3 stage while systematically testing resulting lines in test crosses. The best S3 lines will be further tested, selected, and developed as inbreds for making hybrids or recombined to make synthetics which will receive additional testing to identify those that best fit the organic ideotype. Because speed is essential we plan to do early and repeated testing for combining ability in top cross hybrids allowing resources to be devoted to those populations that demonstrate the greatest potential early on. Winter nurseries will be used to make new crosses, to self F2 plants, to make necessary opcrosses, and to self the summer’s topcrosses to test their grain quality. Experimental hybrids from the breeding programs will be tested in small replicated plot trials at cooperating organic farms managed by the breeder. In addition, selected varieties from the plot trials will be tested in large striptrial plots on farms. Breeding lines will be evaluated for stress and pest resistance in breeding nurseries and specialized testing will be done at a stress nursery in Illinois.