'Duster' wheat: A durable, dual-purpose cultivar adapted to the southern great plains of the USA

Winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivars that gain commercial acceptance in the U.S. southern Great Plains must provide a definitive grain-yield advantage, season-long dependability in dual-purpose management systems, effective resistance to foliar diseases, and tolerance to soil acidity. Our objective was to corroborate each of those strengths in the hard red winter (HRW) wheat cultivar 'Duster' (Reg. No. CV-1065, PI 644016), which was released in 2006 by the Oklahoma Agricultural Experiment Station and the USDA-ARS to complement 'Endurance' (Reg. No. CV-994, PI 639233) with added dough strength and resistance to Wheat spindle streak mosaic. Duster was selected from a double cross, W0405/ NE78488//W7469C/TX81V6187, made within the former Pioneer HRW-wheat breeding program. Neither Duster nor its immediate parents are known to have a sib-pair or parent-offspring relationship with cultivars currently grown in the Great Plains. Duster is a descendent of an F_2:3 line identified in Oklahoma in 1991, from which pedigree selection produced two F₁₃-derived lines that were composited to constitute breeder seed. The experimental line OK93P656H3299-2C04 was tested in the 2005 and 2006 Southern Regional Performance Nursery, where it ranked first and fifth, respectively, for mean grain yield. Data from the Oklahoma Small Grains Variety Performance Tests were primarily used herein to demonstrate competitiveness for economic traits in a wide array of environmental conditions 5 yr following Duster's release.