COVER PAGE. PROJECT TITLE: Evaluation of small grains in California (UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Program and production research)

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1 COVER PAGE PROJECT TITLE: Evaluation of small grains in California (UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Program and production research) PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Mark Lundy OTHER INVESTIGATORS: Department of Plant Sciences UCD: P. Mayo, S. Fraser, D. Prato-Mayo, J. Dubcovsky, Alicia del Blanco, L. Gallagher, O. Chicaiza; UC Cooperative Extension-UCANR: R. Wilson, D. Culp, S. Orloff, M. Leinfelder-Miles, S. Wright, R. Hutmacher, R. Solorio, N. Clark, F. Maciel, O. Bachi, and K. Bali BUDGET TOTAL: 7/1/16 6/30/17: $56,000 for the testing program (in coordination with $84,000 for the breeding program) SUMMARY: The requested funding will be used to support common wheat, durum wheat, and barley trials in the major small grain producing areas of California. The Regional Cereal Evaluation Program will include evaluation nurseries of advanced breeding lines and new and standard cultivars obtained from public and private breeding programs. Trials will be located at representative environments in the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Imperial, and northern Intermountain region and will be grown using production practices appropriate for each environment. The program will also provide elite germplasm nurseries for the UC wheat breeding program in two selected locations to help accelerate the development of public cultivars. The performances (yield, agronomic characteristics, diseases and pest reactions, grain quality) of the entries will be documented and summarized in the Agronomy Progress Reports and reported on the Small Grains website. The resulting information will be used to help identify areas where new cultivars are best adapted and as supporting data for justifying the release of advanced breeding lines from both public and private breeding programs.

2 CALIFORNIA CROP IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION COMPREHENSIVE RESEARCH PROJECT PROPOSAL July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017 PROJECT TITLE: Evaluation of small grains in California (UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Program and production research) PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Mark Lundy OTHER INVESTIGATORS: Department of Plant Sciences UCD: P. Mayo, Sam Fraser, D. Prato-Mayo, J. Dubcovsky, Alicia del Blanco, L. Gallagher, O. Chicaiza; UC Cooperative Extension-UCANR: R. Wilson, D. Culp, S. Orloff, M. Leinfelder-Miles, S. Wright, R. Hutmacher, R. Solorio, N. Clark, F. Maciel, O. Bachi, and K. Bali B. OBJECTIVES: The main objective of the research is to provide objective productivity information for new and existing small grain cultivars to growers in various regions of California as well as to public and private breeding programs. The performances (yield, agronomic characteristics, diseases and pest reactions, grain quality) of cultivars and advanced breeding lines from public and private breeding programs will be evaluated in representative environments throughout California. The UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Tests will cover the main grainproducing areas (including the Sacramento, San Joaquin, Imperial, and northern Intermountain Region) of California. The cultural, management, and biological conditions under which various levels of performance are achieved in the different environments will be documented. In addition, explicit measurement of the pre- and post-season soil water status at the sites along with in-season phenotypic measurements, such as plot-specific NDVI and canopy spectral reflectance at key phenological stages, will be measured. This information will improve the understanding of site-specific environmental interactions and their differential effects on cultivar performance. Areas where new cultivars are best adapted will be identified through the use of such information. Data from the evaluations will be used to justify the release of advanced breeding lines as cultivars or their elimination from the respective breeding programs. In conjunction with the evaluation tests, the distribution and severity of disease and other pest problems will be determined. Early detection of such problems will permit modifications in cultivar deployment before damage becomes severe and losses become substantial. The information will be made available via the Small Grains website ( before the subsequent planting season to help growers make informed decisions. The information will be also published in the annual Agronomy Progress Report ( In order to accelerate the development and release of public cultivars, off-station testing of elite germplasm from the UC wheat breeding program will be conducted at key locations. Selected materials can then be advanced to the UC Regional Cereal Evaluation nurseries sooner than normal, and, when combined with early generation quality testing, the time required for cultivar 1

3 release can be shortened. Elite germplasm (both common and durum wheat) from public and private breeding programs will be produced under optimum cultural conditions in the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys for collaborative end-use (milling and baking) tests in cooperation with the California Wheat Commission and California s milling and baking industries. For the Intermountain region of northern California, germplasm from both public and private wheat and barley breeding programs operating in the Pacific Northwest will be evaluated at the UC Intermountain Research and Experiment Station in Tulelake in cooperation with Oregon State University. This effort will help accelerate the development of cultivars for the Intermountain region of northern California. C. PROCEDURES: The following replicated yield tests are planned for the season: Common wheat: The Regional fall-sown test (30-50 entries, predominantly HRS, but including HWS, HWW, HRW, and other classes or subclasses made available by cooperating breeders) will be planted at 6-8 sites in the Central Valley and surrounding areas and in the Imperial Valley. The fall-sown elite nurseries established in collaboration with the UCD wheat breeding program (20-30 entries, HWS and HRS) will be planted at two sites in the Central Valley. The quality collaborators nursery, which includes elite lines and new cultivars for the collaborative testing program, will be planted at 1-2 sites in the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys. This program involves domestic millers and bakers, grain dealers, and private breeding programs. A fall-sown winter wheat test (approximately 40 entries) and a spring-sown wheat test (approximately 30 entries) will be planted at the UC IREC in Tulelake, CA in cooperation with Oregon State University. Durum wheat: The Regional fall-sown test (30-50 entries) will be conducted in 3-4 sites in the Central Valley and one site in the Imperial Valley. The fall-sown elite nursery conducted in collaboration with the UCD wheat breeding program (20-30 entries) will be planted at one site in the San Joaquin Valley and one site in the Imperial Valley. A durum wheat quality nursery consisting of elite lines and new cultivars will be planted to provide grain samples for quality analyses for the durum wheat collaborative testing program, at one site in the Sacramento Valley and one site at the Imperial Valley. Barley: A fall-sown test (approximately 30 entries) will be conducted at 3-4 sites in the Central Valley, and a spring-sown test (30-50 entries) will be conducted at the UC IREC in Tulelake, CA. All small grain tests will be conducted on University of California research farms or grower fields under irrigated or rainfed culture. Nurseries will be planted at seeding rates required to 2

4 achieve plant densities of 1.0 million plants per acre for rainfed wheat tests, at 1.2 million plants per acre for irrigated wheat tests, and at 1.0 million plants per acre for all barley tests. Randomized complete block designs with 4 replications will be used, and individual plots will measure about 20 feet in length and 8-9 drill rows (6-7.5" spacing) in width. Conditions under which production occurs (location, planting and harvest dates, soil type, previous crop, fertilization, irrigation, pesticide use, seasonal rainfall) will be documented. Preplant and post-harvest soil moisture through the rooting zone will be measured in order to improve estimates of crop water availability and in-season use. The nurseries will be observed throughout the growing season and in-season phenotypic measurements such as plot-specific NDVI and canopy spectral reflectance will be recorded at key phenological stages in order to improve the understanding of environmental effects on crop growth and development at the diverse sites. Data on yields, bushel weights, kernel weights, agronomic characteristics (plant height, lodging, dates of heading and maturity, shatter) and reactions to important diseases and pests will be recorded and analyzed. Seed samples from grain harvests at selected locations will be analyzed for protein content and milling and baking performance (common and durum wheat tests). Results of the evaluations will be published in a UC Davis Agronomy Progress Report which will be distributed to UC farm advisors, other researchers, consultants, growers, seed dealers, and interested members of the small grains industry. Results also will be posted on the UC Small Grains website ( and provided to farm advisors for use in county newsletters. Presentations of results of the research will be made at grower meetings and field days that are held throughout the state each year. D. JUSTIFICATION: All of the advanced breeding lines that could become cultivars are evaluated first throughout California in the UC Regional Cereal Evaluation program. Areas where advanced breeding lines are best adapted are identified, as are areas where they are not adapted and should not be grown. Concurrently, the suitability of the germplasm from both agronomic and quality standpoints is determined, and is referred to by those involved in making recommendations to growers. The UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Program serves as the foundation for the small grains research program and is extremely important to California's small grains growers, advisors, seed companies, plant breeders, end-users and others in the industry. Between 750 thousand and 1 million acres of various market classes of small grains (primarily wheat and barley, but also significant oat and triticale acreage for grain and forage) are grown each year in California, with some acreage in most counties. Production occurs under a wide range of environmental conditions and management practices, and supplies a variety of food, feed, and forage markets, for both domestic use and export. The acreage of individual cultivars changes from year to year as new cultivars are tested, approved, and released for commercial production to replace cultivars that have become susceptible to diseases or other pests or lack key characteristics. New cultivars should represent improvements in specific characteristics of 3

5 the crop, meet specific needs of the grain industry, and decrease vulnerability to stresses resulting from diseases, pests, and unfavorable physical environments. In order to assure that new cultivars do represent such improvements, it is essential that advanced breeding lines be evaluated throughout California before they are released as cultivars. The evaluations result in the identification of regions where breeding lines are best adapted and, conversely, reveal which breeding lines are not adapted, have unacceptable characteristics, and should not be released as cultivars. Both public and private breeding programs use results from the UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Tests as supporting data for justifying the release of advanced breeding lines as cultivars. The UCD wheat breeding program also uses these data in the PVP applications for their varieties. New cultivars that combine appropriate agronomic characteristics, specific end-use quality traits, resistance to multiple diseases, and high yield potential are needed for the economic survival of small grain growers in California. The continued appearance of new races of the pathogens that cause stripe rust, leaf rust, Septoria tritici leaf blotch, net blotch, and scald has made wheat and barley extremely vulnerable to disease epidemics and yield loss. Stripe rust remains the major threat. For wheat, the disease has caused significant statewide yield losses each year ranging from a low of 2% to a high of 25% (in 2003). The rust samples submitted by the program have been essential to identify races of the wheat stripe rust pathogen in California. The total number of races detected in the U.S. exceeds 140. The continuing appearance of new races makes this a particularly difficult problem because new races may overcome the resistance of currently grown cultivars. Several new cultivars (public and private) that contain multiple stripe rust resistance genes represent the best options for replacing current susceptible cultivars. Additional advanced breeding lines containing pyramided stripe rust resistance genes are under evaluation in the UC Regional Cereal Evaluation Program. The regional testing program is an important component of the monitoring network required for early warning of new virulences. The addition of more explicit measurement of the pre- and post-season soil water status at the sites along with in-season phenotypic measurements, such as plot-specific NDVI and canopy spectral reflectance at key phenological stages, will add important information to the trial data in the cropping season. The increasing availability of relatively low-cost measurement technology and computing platforms is fundamentally changing the way crop phenotyping is performed around the world. In order to remain relevant and competitive in the scientific landscape of the future, the statewide variety testing program must begin to integrate much more ambitious measurements of the crop-soil environment into future research trials. Historically, this program has been an experiment testing distinct genotypes (G) across a variety of environments (E). It measures end-of-season productivity and uses this result to infer the inseason G x E interaction. Beginning in the season we will more explicitly measure the in-season crop-soil environment. In subsequent years we intend to begin manipulating a subset of the environmental conditions via management (M). In time, our goal is to transition the variety testing program from a G x E experiment with no explicit in-season measurement of the cropsoil environment to a G x E x M experiment with intensive in-season measurement of the cropsoil environment so that the productivity results are more quantitatively grounded in key biophysical determinants of growth such as water and nutrient availability. In this way, we will 4

6 multiply the information created by the trials both for the purposes of more informed breeding and variety selection and in order to increase the crop management information that can be gleaned from the effort and subsequently communicated to growers and crop consultants in the state. For the season, the pre- and post-season soil moisture measurements and the inseason spectral measurements represent the first step in this transition. The likelihood of success in meeting the stated objectives is high if adequate funding is provided because of participation in the project by most plant breeders, both public and private, currently developing small grain cultivars for California. The attached progress report documents the extensive work done across all small grain growing areas in CA ( Agronomy Progress Report 320). These results document the ability of the UC Regional Cereal Evaluation program to deliver relevant and in-depth information on small grain adaptability throughout California. We look forward to continuing this service for the California small grains industry. A detailed budget for the UC Regional Cereal Evaluation program is presented below. 5

7 E. BUDGET FOR REGIONAL TESTING Regional Testing program Regional Testing Program CCIA Proposal - Lundy Sources of funding Staff Salaries $102,744 CWC-Regional testing request $130,000 Staff Benefits $40,070 Quality Collaborators Program $5,000 Contract/Seasonal labor $16,000 CCIA-Regional testing request $56,000 Total Salaries and Contract labor $158,814 Statewide testing fees $10,000 Private companies elite-line testing $20,000 UCCE Advisor Collaborator funding $10,000 Testing program reserve funding $6,314 Acreage Rental/Recharge $20,000 Total $227,314 Research and Extension Center labor and service charges $14,000 Total UC collaborator funding $44,000 Truck $7,000 Travel $7,000 Equipment maintenance, repair, use and replacement $6,500 Consumable supplies and materials $4,000 Total supplies and equipment $24,500 Total Regional Testing Program $227,314 Budget justification The budget for the regional testing program includes support for UC Davis Department of Plant Science staff members, who are essential for implementing the field research, communicating with the various collaborators, curating the trial data and seed stocks, maintaining the equipment, and producing written and web-based summaries associated with the research. In addition to the full-time staff, contract and seasonal labor is a necessary supplement for peaks in seasonal labor related to tasks such as weighing entries, preparing seeds for planting, and recording the necessary post-harvest measurements on the harvested seed. Relative to previous years, the proposed budget devotes a larger proportion of the requested funds to collaborators within UC Cooperative Extension. In the past year, a new Agronomy Advisor was hired in the San Joaquin Valley, and, over the course of the coming year, up to three new Agronomy Advisors will begin to serve in the Sacramento Valley. The contributions to the trials from the existing Advisors in place in the Intermountain region (Orloff) and the San Joaquin Valley (Wright) are invaluable to the integrity of the overall experiment. Historically, the regional Advisors played a much more prominent role in the trials and made important contributions due to their more nuanced understanding of the particular variables of importance in a given region. Moving forward, the trials will benefit greatly by more explicit involvement from the UCCE Advisors. As such, the budget reflects a new portion that would enable these 6

8 Advisors to be compensated for the physical and staff resources they devote to the trials in their regions. Moving forward, this small investment to ensure the buy-in from current, new and future Advisors will provide manifold benefits in terms of the quality and quantity of the data produced and the information communicated from the trials across the state. Ninety percent of the funding for this new budget item is gained from reductions relative to the previous cycle in the overall funding for travel and the elimination of the funds related to disease screening travel. With more cooperators on the ground and participating in the sub-regions, we anticipate a reduced need for travel from the Davis collaborators and more observational contributions from the UCCE Advisors. We expect this redirection of funding to have multiplicative effects over time. In a similar vein, the proposed budget devotes more resources to labor and service charges at the Research and Extension Centers where 4 trials are conducted annually. In recent years a portion of the cost of the trials at the REC has been borne by the regional UCCE Advisors (both acreage and labor charges). Therefore, the actual cost of running the trials at these sites has been underestimated in previous years budgets. In addition, after reviewing the program costs, it does not appear to be cost effective for the Davis-based staff to travel to the Intermountain region to establish trials. Therefore, we are beginning to transition much of the conduct of these trials to the IREC staff in Tulelake, as is currently the case at the DREC in El Centro. Finally, as mentioned in the text of this proposal, over the next several seasons the trial will begin to transition from a GxE experiment with few explicit management components, to a GxExM experiment with more integration and measurement of agronomic variables. To successfully control and integrate variables such as nitrogen and water, we will need to rent larger portions of the acres at the REC sites so that we can grow rotational crops in the non-trial areas in order to prepare and control the ground for effective measurement of key variables during the trial period. Control over the rotation on a 2-3 year timescale is essential to producing high-quality management data, but it will result in greater rental and labor costs at these sites. However, as with some of the other re-direction of funding, over the medium-term, this investment will multiply the information produced by the trials, bringing novel information into the breeding and variety selection efforts and adding valuable management information to the experimental outputs that are not currently within the scope of the trial. An inventory of the status of key equipment related to the conduct of these trials and the annual costs associated with repair, maintenance, use and replacement resulted in an increase in funding in this category relative to the previous budget. In addition, the disposable and consumable supply category has been separated from field operation expenses. Previous budgets have underestimated these costs. The current figure more accurately represents these expense categories moving forward. Despite the revision of and addition to several categories of the budget, the total proposed budget to run the program has been reduced relative to the previous year as have the requested amounts to the CWC and CCIA. We have also increased our income expectations from collaborative agreements with Limagrain and Syngenta and fees generated by the Regional Testing Program to $30,000. Nevertheless, we expect to contribute approximately $6500 from our reserves in the 7

9 coming fiscal year. These sources of income represent $36,000 contributed from UC-Davis sources in order to run the variety testing program in the coming year. This is in addition to the contribution now being made by the University for CE Specialist M. Lundy s salary. We are aware of the toll that the drought and the unusually high percentage of wheat cut for forage have taken on the funding collected by the CWC, so full support of this year s CCIA request (93% of last year s request) is critical. We are actively exploring options for broadening the base of funding for applied grain cropping system research through new grants. We believe that the proposed changes to the trial structure will enable us to begin multiplying the outputs from the existing effort, thereby increasing its value to a broader range of funding sources. In addition, we are beginning to pursue novel approaches to the collection of research funds from small grain forage acreage. We are hopeful that the efforts will begin to find success in the medium-term. Regardless, we appreciate and depend on the basic support of this program that the CCIA generously provides. F. APPROVALS Mark Lundy, Assistant CE Specialist Principal Investigator Chris van Kessel Plant Science Dept. Chair 8