Kansas organizations collaborate on wheat research
By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com
For the first time, three Kansas wheat producer organizations are pooling together to prioritize research funding needs while getting the most out of wheat growers dollars. The Kansas Wheat Commission, Kansas Wheat Alliance and Kansas Crop Improvement Association recently announced that collectively they would fund $1.4 million into wheat research for 2014.
The research dollars will be for the 2014 fiscal year from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. The research monies will be divided up between researchers at Kansas State University. The research funding comes from money collected from every bushel of wheat sold in the state. For every bushel, one and a half cents is collected.
The bulk of the funding will go towards aspects that will assist with wheat variety development including: disease control and resistance, insect control and resistance, quality assessment, genetic mapping and trait identification. While the majority of the funding is for lab and field work, one project that was granted approval aims to connect wheat growers with seed distributers on the web.