Development and Agronomic Performance of Transgenic Roundup Ready Spring Wheat in the North Central Plains of the United States

Abstract

The launch of commercially available Roundup Ready (RR) soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] cultivars in 1996 initiated a new era in agricultural weed management. Efforts with the goal of creating commercially available hard red spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.; HRSW) cultivars were initiated between Monsanto and three HRSW breeding programs located in the North Central Plains of United States. A backcross (BC) breeding scheme was initiated to introgress the RR trait into four previously released HRSW cultivars with the ultimate goal of offering a novel and cost‐effective weed management option to growers through the application of Roundup herbicide directly over established RR HRSW cultivars. Agronomic field tests were performed in 2002 and 2003 with 12 transgenic backcross‐derived (BCD) RR HRSW breeding lines and four recurrent parent (RP) cultivars in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. Grain yield, grain volume weight, and days to heading among the RR HRSW lines were largely similar to their respective RP cultivars. However, plant lodging scores were often significantly lower among the BCD‐RR lines compared to the conventional cultivars.