Western Regional Nurseries:
 End Use Quality Assessments

The quality data as well as agronomic data are also available at Grain Genes under their quality testing section. The end use quality data are presented here, classified by crop year.

USDA-ARS Western Wheat Quality Lab.
Dr. Craig F. Morris, Director;
Doug Engle, Cultivar Development Manager

The USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Western Wheat Quality Laboratory (WWQL) located on the Washington State University campus in Pullman, Washington, provides a detailed and thorough assessment of the end-use quality of experimental lines from wheat breeding programs in the Western States.

The Western Regional Nurseries (WRN) are a cooperative endeavor of public and private wheat breeders who evaluate each other’s breeding lines, as a group, over multiple locations. Dr. Kim Campbell, ARS Research Geneticist, is the Coordinator of the WRN system. Breeding lines are grown in one of three nurseries, the Western Regional Hard Winter Wheat Nursery, the Western Regional Soft Winter Wheat Nursery, and the Western Regional Spring Wheat Nursery. For end-use quality assessment, the spring wheat entries are divided into a Western Regional Hard Spring Wheat Nursery and a Western Regional Soft Spring Wheat Nursery.

The data and comments which appear here are also included in the report, Results From Cooperative Wheat Varietal Experiments in the Western Region. This report also contains a listing of cooperating agencies and personnel, nursery locations, plot management, test site information and agronomic and pathological data.

Grain of nursery entries is submitted by the cooperators directly to the WWQL. We make a preliminary assessment of general grain quality by measuring the test weight, protein and hardness, and visually inspecting the grain for sprout damage and other defects on 2-3 check varieties. Based on this preliminary assessment, appropriate locations are selected and equal quantities of grain from two or more locations is composited to create the test sample.