Life Sciences Commons^™

Breeding For End-Use Quality: Reflections On The Nebraska Experience, P. Stephen Baenziger, D. R. Shelton, M. J. Shipman, R. A. Graybosch

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

Every cultivar released in Nebraska must have four characteristics: improved agronomic performance relative to existing cultivars, exceptional winterhardiness, resistance to Puccinia graminis (the causal agent of stem rust), and acceptable end-use quality. This paper will discuss our strategy for breeding cultivars with acceptable end-use quality. All experimental lines are derived from crosses with at least one or more parents with acceptable enduse quality. As soon as individual lines are identified (F₅) generation, microquality analyses are conducted and approximately 10% are discarded on the basis of poor end-use quality. In the F 6 and later generations, samples are composited …