Syngenta and Kansas Wheat Partner to Introduce AgriPro Winter Wheat Variety Honoring Bob Dole

Syngenta and the Kansas Wheat Commission are pleased to announce a new wheat variety for the Central Plains named in honor of Bob Dole, former state legislator and U.S. senator from the heartland.

Developed by Kansas State University, the hard red winter wheat variety Bob Dole will be available through AgriPro® brand wheat for the 2018 season thanks to a public-private partnership between Syngenta and Kansas wheat farmers through the Kansas Wheat Commission and Kansas Wheat Alliance.

“I am honored to be the namesake of this new wheat variety that will be grown in America’s heartland,” said Dole. “Wheat feeds people across the country and throughout the world, so I am particularly humbled that my name is attached to such a fundamental source of global nutrition. I believe in the value of this partnership between Syngenta and the Kansas Wheat Commission – an alliance that will ensure continued access to quality food.”

The Bob Dole variety, which will be available for fall planting, will feature a good disease package with leaf and stripe rust tolerance along with fusarium head blight tolerance. Farmers can also expect excellent end-use quality, and a good grain and forage yield in the heart of wheat production in Central Kansas and Oklahoma.

The K-State Wheat Breeding Program is a great asset for Kansas farmers, and it’s at the heart of wheat production in the United States. The program focuses on the following traits: high grain yield; durable resistance to leaf rust and stripe rust; heat and drought tolerance; resistance to Fusarium head scab, barley yellow dwarf and Hessian fly; and high qualities for pan bread and noodle making.

There is an extensive team of cooperators in the wheat breeding efforts at K-State. The main breeding team works with the world-class Wheat Genetics and Genomics Resource Center on genomic mapping and marker-assisted breeding. Other cooperators include the USDA wheat genetics program, the Hard Red Wheat Quality Laboratory, wheat programs in the Plant Pathology and Grain Science Departments, and an associated wheat breeding program at K-State’s Agricultural Research Center-Hays.

Thanks to wheat breeding programs like the one at Kansas State University, producers have ever-improving options of wheat varieties to plant. Whether it’s improved resistance or increased yields, wheat breeders are creating varieties that meet producers’ changing needs.

K-State has released more than 40 wheat varieties, each a step forward in some capacity over previous releases. Several of these varieties have followed in the tradition of being namesakes for influential figures in the wheat industry, and the partners behind the development of this new release are proud to honor a great Kansan and a champion for agriculture.

“Bob Dole is a man of quality character who always looked out for wheat farmers and rural communities,” said Greg McCormack, AgriPro key account manager for Syngenta in the Plains region. “We are proud to partner with Kansas Wheat to provide farmers with a new variety that has great yielding potential and features strong quality characteristics, just like its namesake.”