Hot News

1.01.2008

By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
Senior Editor

QUEENSTOWN, Md. — The Schillinger Seed Inc. research station in Queenstown, Md., where the first Roundup Ready soybeans were grown, may be on the verge of breaking another agronomic barrier.
Growing in test plots in Puerto Rico — it’s cold here, it’s warm there — are soybean plants from Schillinger Seed, which could be a harbinger of a major breakthrough in the search for resistance to Asian soybean rust.
According to Bill Rhodes, who directs the Schillinger operations here, the seed for those plants came from 2007 test plots in Jackson County, Miss.
Rhodes journeyed to Mississippi in late October to join two plant pathologists, both retired from posts at Mississippi State, who were recruited by Schillinger to oversee the research there.
The field had been invaded by rust spores, but what Rhodes and the pathologists found on inspecting the plants caused them, Rhodes said, “to whoop and holler — they were really excited.”
There was some thought not to “go public” with the apparent research success at this point, as premature as it may be, but it was noted that the field was on the farm of a Jackson County, Miss., Extension agent and the research probably wouldn’t be “private” very long.
Seed was collected in Mississippi from 400 plants in that test plot and shipped to Queenstown where the seeds were sorted, catalogued and sent to Puerto Rico for further development.
In a report to Schillinger, the two retired Mississippi State agronomists Dr. Billy Moore, retired Extension pathologist and Dr. Malcolm Broome, retired Extension agronomist, said that the effort to devclop a rust-resistant soybean variety “appears to be near success, based upon ratings of tests established in south Mississippi in 2006 and 2007 with soybean lines produced by Schllinger Seeds. In two locations where soybean rust was very severe on susceptible lines, none could be found on those resistant soybean lines.”
“Not only was resistance significant, but those same lines had excellent yields,” Moore and Broome continued. “Based upon data and collections made from these tests, soybean producers may soon have good yielding varieties that can avoid losses from Asian soybean rust without depending solely on the use of fungicides.”
Moore and Broome said they were “very excited to see these resistant lines under heavy rust pressure and are hoping Schillinger Seeds will soon have varieties available for release to growers.
From their observations, both resistance and high yield potential are present in these new lines.”
John Schillinger, owner of the seed company who was on the Eastern Shore briefly for a few days before Christmas, said the rust-resistant lines will be yield-tested in 2008 on Delmarva and in the southern United States.
Seed is being increased in Puerto Rico and Argentina, he said, and the company “expects to have rust resistant technologies and cyst nematode resistance in 2011, if not before.”
Elsewhere on the “Schillinger front,” farmers working with Chesapeake Fields are growing a newly released edible variety soybean from Schillinger and a company in Iowa is marketing two Schillinger Group 3 varieties that are conventional — that is, not Roundup Ready — but offer low-linolenic acid content.
Rhodes said the company continues to make progress in its development of soybean varieties that incorporate low linolenic genes, glyphosate resistance and have above average protein content while maintaining good agronomics and competitive yields.
“That type of variety would be an ideal product for the poultry integrators on the East Coast,” he said.