A Focus on Improving the Wheat Industry
C&M Seeds has been celebrating a pretty large milestone in the year 2018, 40 years in business. Although that is not the longest time when you look at the agriculture industry, we are pretty proud of the accomplishments over those years. We have seen wheat acres grow significantly and new classes being utilized to the maximum opportunity.
One thing that we have come to accept and look forward to around our place is the constant desire for change. Our philosophy has always been that change is a good thing, and drives you to continue improving your efforts to stay ahead. We have started to upgrade and modernize our seed production facility in Palmerston with new systems to help improve the quality of all seed we produce as well as improve our safety efforts at our facility. New bins with bottom entry, and a state of the art seed handling system are being installed over the winter. Follow our facility changes on twitter @thewheatteam.
On the variety side, our research department is on the tail end of a massive wave of new genetics. I don’t think we have ever had so many great new varieties entering the marketplace at one time. One new Hard Red Spring Wheat will be available for sale this spring. Raven will bring growers excellent bushel weights, improved proteins over our existing lines as well as #1 yield rankings in the spring wheat class.
We also have two new hard reds, to be named later in the spring of 2019, that look to bring improvements on our current standards Gallus and Priesley. They have been placed in side by side trials this season for further confirmation, but in our 6 years of testing, these varieties will be welcomed for their combination of yields and protein, again improving the Hard Red Class.
On the soft red side, we also have two varieties that will launch in spring 2019. The first variety has been showing top level yields, above all of the current lines offered, as well as a significant improvement on disease. It carries the FHB1 gene, which is the best known gene for natural defense of the current fusarium strains. The second soft red looks to be an early starting, vigorous growing and very high yielding option. The soft red class will get even stronger with these two varieties, allowing you to choose the best variety for your farm.
Be sure to ask us about on farm trials near you, or better yet, take the opportunity to book a tour of our research plots over the summer and see what really happens behind the doors of the certified seed marketplace. I don’t know the general public knows just how much work goes on behind the scene to ensure that growers have the genetics required to stay ahead of the ever changing portfolio of diseases that present themselves to us. Change is happening, and we are looking forward and embracing our next 40 years!