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KSU website examines quality of hard red winter wheatKansas By this fall, if all goes as planned, wheat producers and buyers will be able to access information about the quality of hard red winter wheat harvested in the Great Plains region through a collaborative project at Kansas State University. The program is a joint effort between K-State's grain science and industry department, K-State Research and Extension, K-State's international grains program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service and its Grain Marketing Products Research Center, and K-State's Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory. "The international grains program staff and faculty in the grain science and industry department are collecting data on the quality of wheat that's harvested, and our lab is working to model and map this data," said Shawn Hutchinson, director of the Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory and an associate professor of geography at K-State. "The next phase of the project will be to design and deploy an interactive Web-based map service where wheat buyers can see near real-time crop information and make better decisions on where they want to buy wheat based on the different characteristics of each crop," Hutchinson said. Working for the past two years with Plains Grains Inc., a consortium of the wheat commissions in hard red winter wheat-producing states, K-State researchers have conducted annual surveys of the wheat quality at harvest time across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana, said Leland McKinney, assistant professor of grain science and industry. Currently, this data is used to generate weekly reports that are uploaded online, McKinney said. With the launch of the new interactive website, wheat producers and international and domestic wheat customers will be able to better access to the data and harvest information. "As the grain is harvested, samples will be collected from grain elevators and be sent to the Wheat Quality Lab at K-State," McKinney said. The wheat is evaluated for physical and chemical characteristics, as well as sprout damage, milling properties and dough and baking characteristics, he said. Researchers say the goal is to see the first prototype for the website by the end of April and then to have the website ready for the 2008 harvest. As the website evolves, McKinney says researchers also would like to make available reports from custom cutters, climate data and opinion pieces about the wheat market. "We hope to help connect wheat buyers and producers, and we want to promote the quality of U.S. wheat," McKinney said. 4/7/08 Date: 4/2/08 Advertisement
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