Radio Oklahoma Ag Network Associate Farm Director Carson Horn had the chance recently to catch up with Dr. Jeff Koscelny, Bayer Crop Science Global Wheat Commercial Strategy Lead and WestBred Business Lead, during the 2018 National Association of Farm Broadcasters Convention in Kansas City. Koscelny talked about the growing presence of Bayer’s Westbred wheat line in Oklahoma and its reputation for high-performance. Listen to the complete conversation between Koscelny and Horn, by clicking or tapping the LISTEN BAR below at the bottom of the page.
“We’re really proud of what we’ve built with the Westbred brand,” Koscelny said. “Obviously, it’s fairly new to a lot of our Oklahoma and Texas growers, but certainly over the years we’ve brought out some great products and we continue to do so. So, it’s really an exciting time.”
Koscelny says reports have come in on the class of products bred for Oklahoma’s environmental specifications and apparently the results are “fantastic” and seem to be performing very well.
“I know a lot of customers are having great success with them and we’ve had some national winner with the National Yield Contest,” he said. “We’re really proud of that.”
According to Koscelny, sales of Westbred wheat have been steadily growing and he fully expects sales this year to again be up. Despite the challenges of this year’s planting season, Koscelny remarked that area representatives are confident Westbred’s footprint in Oklahoma will have expanded by the end of the year. He says it is Westbred’s superior quality as well as its yield potential that has caught producers’ attention.
“That’s always the debate in the industry - do you go after yield or quality or both,” he said. “Westbred has a long history of going after both. We want our farmers to have good quality in the grain, but we want them to have the best yield they can possibly get, too. So, with the right management practices, our farmers are going to grow bushels that the market wants.”
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