Next Up in Washington Winter Wheat Lines with Dr. Arron Carter

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Drew Lyon: Hello, welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers from WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production.

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My guest today is Dr. Arron Carter. Arron is a professor and the Orville Vogel Endowed Chair of Winter Wheat Breeding and Genetics at WSU. His breeding program focuses on the development of high-yielding, high-quality wheat varieties with resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses in Washington production regions. He uses a combination of traditional breeding methods, along with new technologies such as genomic selection and high-throughput phenotyping to accomplish this.

Arron also teaches undergraduate courses in plant breeding and plant science. Hello, Arron.

Dr. Arron Carter: Hi, Drew.

Drew Lyon: So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how this past year went regarding the selection of new breeding lines?

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah, this was–it was a pretty good year for selection. It was one of those years where we got good disease pressure, so we were really able to separate out resistant and susceptible varieties and remove the susceptible varieties from the breeding program. And it was a year when we had that cold spell in January, so again, we were able to get rid of some material that was susceptible in the program.

And it was just a year where we really saw the good extremes of the high and low. Because in some years, you know, in a drought year, everything’s low yielding, it’s really hard to separate out what’s good and bad. In a really good year, it’s the opposite, right? Everything looks good and it’s hard to throw away anything that’s looking bad.

And so, this year really gave us the spread, like I say, in the diseases, in cold tolerance, and then even in grain yield. We saw a very good spread, which was really able to distinguish out those lines that had genetic potential to perform well and those that didn’t. So, it was pretty nice. It’s one of those years I really like to see as a plant breeder, because we had a lot of good selection pressure. We were able to remove a lot of material, and so the material that was left that we advanced, I have really strong confidence in that it’s actually a good line, resistant, performing well. And that’s just what you like to see. You like to go forward with that confidence instead of in those years where you know nothing gets stripe rust on it. Well, you’re advancing material, but you don’t really know if it really is resistant or not.

Drew Lyon: Okay. I think, as I recall visiting with growers this past harvest season that that’s kind of what they saw too there. Some people really were very pleased with their year and some people were really disappointed with what their wheat did, so quite a variability out there and in production fields as well.

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah. And that’s part of the reason we plant at a lot of different locations is so we can see all that variation and what’s going on in those different environments, so you’re not just planting in one field that might just catch that good rainstorm and everything looks good.

Drew Lyon: Yeah. So, how do you balance the selection with all the different traits that are needed in one individual cultivar, right? It’s more than just one thing that makes or breaks a cultivar. How do you look at that?

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah, it’s really hard. I mean, a lot of it is in discussion with the growers and we’re talking with the growers and really understanding what their needs are, what their production concerns are, and kind of what’s on the top of their list that’s concerning so we can start prioritizing. You know, we always prioritize end-use quality because we have to be able to sell the product. So we have that; so that’s always up there.

And then for a lot of these other traits, you know, we got multiple diseases out there, and so, in combination with the growers and kind of understanding what their major concerns are, we also look at what’s commercially available. So, if we start seeing a deficiency in a certain trait, then, you know, we might focus on that a little more for our next release so we can start getting varieties out there and giving growers those options.

So, if, you know, eyespot foot rot is their major problem, there’s a cultivar available for that. If Soilborne Wheat Mosaic Virus is their major problem, we’ve got a cultivar for that. If snow mold, we’ve got a cultivar for that. So, you know, we don’t have to combine all those into the same line necessarily, because a lot of our lines are regionally focused, so I kind of focus on the diseases of those regions looking for any weaknesses. And then, yeah, a lot of times it’s kind of a little bit of a trade-off. We never have anything that’s bad, but sometimes you can hit one trait that’s excellent, but the next trait you have to settle with very good, right? And so, you kind of have to balance that and just keep making those small improvements year after year, combining more traits, pushing grain yield, pushing end-use quality. So, it is quite a balancing act that, you know–I got this big spreadsheet out and there’s hundreds of columns of data and, yeah, you got to really sort through it and figure out your priorities. But, a lot of that comes just with conversations with the growers and being in tune with the industry and talking with them a lot.

Drew Lyon: Okay. And you do get out to a lot of field days and winter meetings and get that opportunity to visit with them and find out. You know, one of the things I’ve noticed in my interactions is a lot of times you get what the latest problem is, but it may not be really the biggest problem. How do you sort through that, figuring out whether it’s just the problem of the of the year or whether it’s a bigger issue that you really [need to focus on]? Because breeding, how long does it take you to put a variety out? You don’t want to move your whole program for something that may only occur once every 10 or 20 years.

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah. Right. Yeah. So, we try and balance that also. You know, just again talking with a lot of experts, talking with a lot of farmers. So, if I just have one farmer approach me with an issue, then I’ll research it a little bit. Maybe, you know, maybe it was an insect pest and I’ll research it and find out, “Oh, yeah. It was just a climate issue or that farmer had planted a little bit too early, and we typically don’t see that insect pest,” so I won’t put a lot of effort into that.

It might be something else where, you know, maybe 10, 15, 20 growers start talking about something. And then, if we start looking into that and seeing, “Oh, yeah, this, you know, maybe we brought in a new crop in rotation and that’s starting to increase a certain disease, and, you know, maybe that’s going to be a problem.” Then we start thinking about it. And, you know, on some of these, we can just start developing the germplasm. Like, let’s say we need to bring in a new gene for disease resistance, we just slowly start putting that into our Washington material so that if we need to make additional crosses in the future, we already have something that’s fairly well adapted.

You know, most of the times when you bring in those new traits, that first round of crossing usually doesn’t produce a very good variety, because, again, we’ve got hundreds of traits we have to try and get perfected. So, we’ll usually make a cross, get it into like a soft white background that’s pretty good, and then make additional crosses that really those second round of crosses usually lead to the commercial releases.

So, you know, there’s some different strategies we can do depending on, you know, what the farmers are telling us and consulting with the, again, the entomologists, pathologists, whoever it might be, to see is this going to be a problem? Should we start working on it? Is it a 1 in 20-year issue that probably doesn’t deserve, you know, a lot of effort?

So yeah, it’s just, I think, the biggest thing in that is just all the communication. You know, it’s not just me sitting around by myself making a lot of the decisions. You know, I rely on you and Dr. Burke for a lot of weed science questions and our pathologists, entomologists, end-use quality specialists, so everybody there is kind of giving that feedback back into the program to help us make the decisions.

Drew Lyon: Okay. So, speaking of decisions, what traits are you going to be working on here in the near future?

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah, I was just up at the Wheat Commission meeting a couple weeks ago right before the Thanksgiving break and I had started the conversation with them about that. It’s kind of like “Where are we looking to go? What direction do we need to go in the next 5 or 10 years so we can start putting some of that effort there?”

You know, we’re trying to build up the germplasm a lot for different diseases. We’re constantly working on that. But, you know, kind of in my perspective, probably herbicide tolerance is the next area I think we’re going to try and push a little bit. You know, we’ve had the Clearfield technology out there and we’re starting to see it not work anymore.

CoAXium came along, but we know we’ve already got resistance out there. It’s just a matter of selecting for it. So, you know, if we can be good stewards of that, it’s going to last a while, but to be good stewards of that, we need additional herbicides to rotate in with that. And so, we’ve released a metribuzin-tolerant line that can tolerate the high label rates of metribuzin that we would typically see crop injury on at those higher label rates. This line looks pretty good. And we don’t see much injury or yield reduction at those high label rates.

So, that brings in an additional tool. But again, we got to, you know, we got to keep working on it. We can’t just throw out one, use it ‘til it’s no longer effective, put out another one, use it ‘til it’s no longer effective. We’re really trying to develop a program where we can have three or four different herbicide tolerant lines out there that can be rotated through for our different growing regions, because, you know, each of those is going to be a little different also whether you’re winter wheat/summer fallow that might be a different herbicide package than if you’re in the rotations here in the Palouse.

So, you know, it’s something I’m excited about. We’ve got some good populations that have been mutated that we can start screening for resistance or tolerance, so it’s just a matter of kind of getting the process started and going forward and working towards that end goal.

Drew Lyon: Yeah. It’s too bad that the Clearfield and CoAXium didn’t come out together so that we could use both of them and not run one into the ground before starting the next one. Which reminds me, I was out of field day, I think it was last summer, but I had a number of growers talk to me about how do I move from a Clearfield system where I’ve used Beyond for many years to a CoAXium? A lot of them have residual Beyond out there and I think I’ve talked to you sometime in the past. Are you working on having a variety that has both in so you could plant it–it’s CoAXium resistant, but you can plant it in a situation where it’s going to be exposed to Beyond?

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah, I get that question a lot from the farmers also. Currently, the license that we have does not allow us to combine those two together. But it’s a conversation that’s been had that is currently being had to see if we need to change that that license or, you know, what needs to go on.

So yeah, that’s kind of a decision outside of WSU with the group that holds the license for that technology. But yeah, it’s something again, we’ve been thinking a lot about and just even as we’re like developing new herbicide tolerant varieties, you know, it’s the same thing. Do you put two different herbicide tolerances into the same line? Do you put them into different lines for, you know, rotation purposes? Do you put something in that it can be sprayed in the fall and then in the spring? You know what I mean? There’s so many different, so many different scenarios. You know, it’s just going to take more conversation with you, with Dr. Burke, as we really try and figure out the best way to release these new varieties. But, yeah, it’s a concern. Yeah.

Most growers are either using a soil test to see if they have that residual and see if they can go straight into a CoAXium variety. Some are, you know, just planting that Clearfield line, but not spraying for a year and then going into the CoAXium following that. So, you know, a lot of different, a lot of different scenarios there.

Drew Lyon: Yep. Yeah, I’m glad to hear that you’re prioritizing herbicide resistance because it is getting to be more and more problematic out there. So, good trait to be adding, from this weed scientist perspective.

So, given that winter wheat is pretty much all in the ground now and things are cooling down, what do you spend your winter months working on when you’re not planting or harvesting?

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah, I just got this question yesterday. I was out with a colleague and they were like, “Man, you must not be doing anything now. Wheat’s planted. You’re just sitting around taking a vacation.” Unfortunately, not the case. You know, we turn a lot of our time to doing the things that we didn’t get to do during the summer months when we were pretty busy. So, we work a lot on grant proposals, a lot on manuscript submissions. From the research side of what we do, we attend a lot of meetings over the wintertime just to kind of catch up on the scientific knowledge and plant breeding innovations that have been occurring. But then also, you know, there’s still a lot of data that we need to go through over the wintertime because, you know, from harvest to planting is such a small window for me, a lot of decisions get made, you know, pretty quickly. And so, I take the wintertime to kind of go back and relook at what those decisions were, why those decisions were being made. We get our end-use quality data over the wintertime, and so I can go back and look at what I planted in the ground and then look at the end-use quality data, and can already start redlining a few lines—the, you know, this didn’t make quality standard–even though I’m going to see data coming in this next year. You know, it’s already got a red line through it because it doesn’t meet that parameter. So, we still put a lot of focus in, you know, thinking about the breeding program, making small adjustments.

And then of course, just all the other things we do. The typical maintenance of all our equipment, you know, making sure everything’s good there. Reordering all our supplies, making sure we have a good stock of everything going into the summer months. So, yeah, there’s still a lot of effort going on within the program even though, you know, wheat’s in the ground and just sitting quietly, we’re still pretty busy prepping for the next year.

Drew Lyon: And doing podcasts. [laughter]

Dr. Arron Carter: Doing podcasts. Yeah. That’s usually the time you get to see me is during the winter months. Yeah. If you ask to do this in June, it’s probably a big no.

Drew Lyon: I appreciate having you on today, Arron. Your program is huge. [It’s] a very important position you have and the growers really look to you to provide them with material that will help them survive in a very tough industry: the wheat industry in this country.

Dr. Arron Carter: Yeah. No, it’s what it’s what I love doing. I love being able to produce that product and interact with them so it’s been a very rewarding career for me.

Drew Lyon: Thanks, Arron.

Dr. Arron Carter: Thanks.

Drew Lyon:

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Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. If you have questions or topics you’d like to hear on future episodes, please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu — (drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter [X] @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University.

I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.

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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by guests of this podcast are their own and does not imply Washington State University’s endorsement.