The Texas Agricultural Experiment Station (TAES) is pleased to announce that marketing rights for TAM 111 Wheat in the U.S. have been granted to AgriPro Wheat, a business unit of Advanta, USA.

Steve Brown, Program Director of the Texas Foundation Seed Service says, "AgriPro has demonstrated it’s commitment to the health of the certified seed industry in Texas and throughout the U.S. and at the same time demonstrated it’s stewardship of varieties developed outside of the AgriPro wheat breeding program. We felt that after AgriPro’s initial commercialization efforts of a limited market TAES wheat variety, TAM 400, this was a good opportunity for both TAES and AgriPro to move forward with a more broadly adapted variety which should have a market presence in many wheat producing states.

One of the TAES missions is to provide genetically pure improved wheat varieties to Texas producers, but at the same time, we would like to make these improved varieties available to wheat producers in other states. This can be accomplished through AgriPro’s extensive network of wheat seed associates throughout Texas and the U.S. We look forward to working with AgriPro to meet the commercialization goals of wheat producers throughout the Southern Great Plains."

David Worrall, Co-Manager of AgriPro Wheat at Vernon, Texas, said, "the addition of TAM 111 to the AgriPro Wheat marketing lineup will give producers an excellent addition to their varietal arsenal. This will be particularly true for producers in the Texas Panhandle and western Kansas. We value the trust Texas A&M has placed in us and look forward to providing Great Plains wheat producers with high quality seed of an exciting new variety."

TAM 111 is a high yielding, white-chaffed, hard red winter wheat variety, released by the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in October of 2002. It has tall stature for a semi-dwarf variety, which in combination with excellent drought resistance makes it well suited to dryland production on the High Plains of Texas and north through the wheat belt of Kansas. It also has a strong irrigated yield record, and is unlikely to lodge or shatter. Thus, it is also a good choice for irrigated production, but should not be grown where leaf rust is a likely production constraint. Its medium maturity makes it less susceptible to late spring freezes than other popular cultivars, such as TAM 110 and Jagger. Grain processing attributes of TAM 111 are generally superior to those of previous popular varieties released by TAES.

TAM 111 is moderately resistant to wheat streak mosaic virus and barley yellow dwarf virus, and resistant to stripe rust. TAM 111 exhibits susceptible reactions to greenbug, Russian wheat aphid and Hessian fly. While it possesses leaf rust resistance genes, leaf rust races that are prevalent in the southern Great Plains have overcome these.

Currently, protection of TAM 111 is being sought under Title V of the U.S. Plant Variety Protection Act. Seed of TAM 111 may be sold only by variety name as a class of certified seed.