Forage Wheat Cultivar Development for Southern Great Plains.

For decades, stocker cattle producers in the southern Great Plains have used wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) for high protein pasture forage in the fall and winter. The goal of the Noble Foundation’s small grain breeding program is to develop cultivars suitable for improved fall-winter forage production in the southern Great Plains. Seed  is planted between mid-to-late September and forage clipping starts between late November and early December. An improved soft red winter wheat line, NF94120, with excellent fall-winter forage potential has been developed.  NF94120 has a tall growth habit with average lodging resistance and moderately compact seed heads. NF94120 has produced more total and early fall-winter forage than the commonly grown wheat cultivars in southern Oklahoma trials. During five years (2001-2006) of testing, total forage yield of NF94120 was 14% higher but the early fall-winter forage yield was 8% less than the earliest-maturing, commercially available cultivar, Jagger. Relative to cultivar 2174, NF94120 produced 35% more early fall-winter forage and 1% less total forage yield. Therefore, NF94120 has a combination of attributes from the earliest and the highest yielding wheat cultivars. Average forage yield of NF94120 was 6,286 kg ha^-1, of which 2,800 kg ha^-1 (45%) was produced during early fall-winter. NF94120 is recommended only as a graze-out cultivar, is highly resistant to powdery mildew, leaf and stripe rust, and has high levels of cold tolerance. Average seed yield of NF94120 was estimated at 3,273 kg ha^-1.