OSU releases new wheat variety in time for fall planting

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

In advance of the upcoming fall planting season, Oklahoma State University’s Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources announced the release of Bentley, its newest wheat variety.

“OSU has a strong history of producing high performing wheat varieties and Bentley only adds to this proud tradition,” said Jeff Edwards, head of the OSU Department of Plant and Soil Sciences. “The OSU Wheat Improvement Team is dedicated to meeting the needs of Oklahoma wheat producers and we’re excited about the ways Bentley will help them continue to thrive and succeed.”

A hard red winter wheat, Bentley features excellent grain yielding ability under challenging climate conditions, including moderate, but chronic drought stress and late winter freezes.

It also fits well in dual-purpose grazed systems and in minimum-tillage systems promoting the development of multiple leaf spotting diseases.

“Bentley’s drought resistance is equal to or slightly better than Iba, which is currently our best adapted variety for drought, but it has much better leaf hygiene in the presence of leaf spotting diseases, particularly tan spot and physiological leaf spot,” said Brett Carver, lead researcher for the OSU WIT, an interdisciplinary team of nine OSU researchers responsible for developing the variety.

Along with another OSU experimental line, Bentley earned the 2015 Millers Award presented by the Wheat Quality Council. It also has placed in the highest yielding group of varieties at every location for which three-year data (2013-15) is available for the OSU Wheat Variety Trials.

Bentley is best suited for growth in southwestern and central Oklahoma and areas extending north, east and possibly into south central Kansas. Its use in the panhandle should be limited to dryland conditions.

Producers should wait until early September to plant Bentley due to possible heat-sensitive germination and the variety should not be harvested late because of the potential for below-average test weight.

Beginning in August, about 8,000 bushels of foundation seed is expected to be available to current members of Oklahoma Genetics, Inc., a farmer nonprofit that distributes pedigreed seed to producers in Oklahoma and surrounding states.

“We should consider Bentley as a genetic background complementary to what’s currently available in Duster, Gallagher and Iba,” said Carver. “It will offer competitive yield in the presence of multiple yield-limiting factors, with drought being the main factor.”

Bentley is named after Walter Dimmitt Bentley, a former educator turned farmer who served as the first director of the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service from 1914 to 1916 and as assistant director of Extension from 1917 until his sudden death in 1930.

The variety’s name was chosen as part of a contest celebrating Extension’s centennial anniversary in 2014.

Bentley is the first variety OSU has released since Doublestop CL Plus in 2013.

DASNR is comprised of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station and Extension.

For more information about Bentley, contact Oklahoma Foundation Seed Stocks or OGI.