How ‘Madsen’ has shaped Pacific Northwest wheat and beyond

Authors: CARTER, ARRON - Washington State University; ALLAN, R - Retired ARS Employee; BALOW, K - Washington State University; BURKE, A - Washington State University; Chen, Xianming; ENGLE, D - Washington State University; Garland-Campbell, Kimberly; HAGEMEYER, K - Washington State University; Morris, Craig; MURRAY, T - Washington State University; Paulitz, Timothy; SHELTON, G - Washington State University

Submitted to: Journal of Plant Registrations
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/21/2020
Publication Date: 6/1/2020
Citation: Carter, A.H., Allan, R.E., Balow, K., Burke, A., Chen, X., Engle, D.A., Garland Campbell, K.A., Hagemeyer, K., Morris, C.F., Murray, T., Paulitz, T.C., Shelton, G. 2020. How ‘Madsen’ has shaped Pacific Northwest wheat and beyond. Journal of Plant Registrations. 14(3):223-233. https://doi.org/10.1002/plr2.20049.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/plr2.20049

Interpretive Summary: Plant breeders release cultivars that are commercially economical and environmentally sustainable, intending that new cultivars released are superior to ones currently available. Through multiple years of testing in small-plot trials, released cultivars and new breeding lines are evaluated for many agronomic traits such as flowering date, plant height, yield potential, etc. New breeding lines are subjected to different biotic stress conditions to evaluate pest and disease resistance traits. They may even be subjected to different abiotic stress conditions, either under field or controlled conditions, such as cold temperatures, drought, or low pH soils. After these multiple years of testing, breeding lines which have performance better than currently grown cultivars are released for commercial production. Although plant breeders have multiple years of data supporting the performance of the new cultivar, no one really knows how it will perform as a new cultivar until it is released and growers cultivate it under commercial production systems. The soft white winter wheat cultivar ‘Madsen’ is one such cultivar. Released in 1988 for production in the Pacific Northwest, Madsen was targeted to replace commonly grown cultivars such as ‘Nugaines’, ‘Daws’, ‘Stephens’, and ‘Lewjain’. One of the most prominent points of Madsen was its resistance to eyespot foot rot, a common soil-borne fungus in the PNW. Madsen was thought to have inherited its resistance from a T. ventricosum segment carried in the parental line ‘VPM1’, now identified as the gene Pch1. The cultivar Madsen also demonstrated very high levels of resistance to PNW races of the stripe rust fungus, another reason this breeding line was selected for release to growers of the PNW.

Technical Abstract: A plant breeder’s goal is to release cultivars that are commercially economical and environmentally sustainable. The premise is that new cultivars released are superior to ones currently available. Through multiple years of testing in small-plot trials, released cultivars and new breeding lines are evaluated for many agronomic traits such as flowering date, plant height, yield potential, etc. Furthermore, new breeding lines are subjected to different biotic stress conditions to evaluate pest and disease resistance traits. They may even be subjected to different abiotic stress conditions, either under field or controlled conditions, such as cold temperatures, drought, or low pH soils. After these multiple years of testing, breeding lines which have performance better than currently grown cultivars are released for commercial production. Although plant breeders have multiple years of data supporting the performance of the new cultivar, no one really knows how it will perform as a new cultivar until it is released and growers cultivate it under commercial production systems. Information was gathered on the cultivar Madsen to evaluate multiple trait characteristics of the cultivar. Since Madsen has been tested in many different trials over multiple years, both as a commercial entry as well as a ‘check’ cultivar, it has been tested in comparison to many different cultivars. As such, the data presented will compare Madsen to other commercially released cultivars that were in the same trial as Madsen at the time the study was conducted. When trials had large numbers of entries that needed to be trimmed, comparison cultivars were selected based on whether they were either widely produced commercially, had Madsen in their pedigree, or were grown over the same years as Madsen.