STILLWATER, Okla. – In 1892, A.C. Magruder initiated a soil fertility study to evaluate Oklahoma wheat production. In 1930, H.J. Harper established 10 separate fertilization treatments on these plots. The rest is history.Wheat research on the Magruder plots continues today, and the Oklahoma State University wheat research program has earned international acclaim for its ability to locate specific wheat genes that contribute to nutrientuse efficiency and disease and pest resistance.Brett Carver, regents professor and wheat genetics chair in the OSU Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, took over the modern wheat breeding program in 1998, following the retirement of Ed Smith. Twenty-six years later, Carver is one of the most recognized faces nationwide in wheat breeding and genetics.“I had the idea going into this that we needed to have a more concerted effort for our scientists to work in a more collaborative way rather than in a competitive way,” Carver said. “It’s not unusual for researchers at universities to compete for research funding, but I thought, why don’t scientists just get together and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do?’” Thus, the Wheat Improvement Team was born. The team of 11 is dedicated to improving protection against 14 or more fungal, bacterial and viral diseases and four insect species. The team also focuses on tolerance to drought and low soil pH, optimizing growth stages for dual- purpose or grain-only wheat production, and improving other agronomic and quality traits.Navigating the Oklahoma landscapeIn 2000, the team identified stripe rust for the first time in breeding nurseries.“Before then, I had never given stripe rust a thought because it was so novel. Little did I know it would become a full-blown nuisance,” Carver said.The team released variety OK102 in 2002. That same year, stripe rust hit Oklahoma with a vengeance and decimated OK102.“I’ll never forget going to a wheat commission meeting in 2002, and a producer looked me straight in the face and said, ‘That’s the sorriest variety I’ve ever grown,’” Carver said. “That’s never what you want to hear. It turned out that it was susceptible to early infections of stripe rust, but we had no real data to go on with the disease until 2001. We knew we had to put more resources into that disease. To date, we haven’t shut it down, but we have a good handle on it now with varieties like Smith’s Gold, OK Corral, Paradox and ...
