May 19, 1999

USDA has developed a new wheat variety to help farmers slow the spread of wheat scab. It will be available for use for spring crops in 2000. It is a hard red spring wheat that slows the spread of the disease in the seed head so fewer kernels are destroyed. This year, USDA increased the annual research spending on scab by $3 million.

The new variety is named for Donald V. McVey, a plant pathologist at USDA's Cereal Disease Laboratory in St. Paul, MN. Its development was funded in part by the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, Red Lake Falls, MN, through money from wheat farmers. The Minnesota Crop Improvement Association in St. Paul will distribute the seed to certified growers.

Scab losses cost U.S. wheat growers more than $2.6 billion between 1991 and 1997. Scab shrivels kernels of wheat and other cereal grain crops such as barley and produces toxins that can make crops unsuitable for flour, cereal, some malt and animal feed. Many growers discover the problem only after harvest when kernels are nothing more than empty shells.