The Dakotan: This is Ag Issues with Neil Roberts. Neil Robert: Welcome to another edition of Ag Issues. Our guest this week is in the Sue Spring wheat breeder Andrew Green. And Andrew, I understand industry has an exciting new spring wheat variety coming out soon. Tell us about it. Andrew Green: Yeah, that's right. So ND Heron was released from the experiment station this winter, which means that it's on farm plots this year and it's big seed increase year for distribution to farmers next year. Andy Heron is a little bit unique. It's got some good disease resistance. It has unique and use quality. And then it's got really high water absorption, which is a pretty big deal for the export market. And it yields and performs well in central and western North Dakota. Neil Robert: All right. Good stuff, Andrew. And hey, we'll talk more after boots to this new variety when we come back. The Dakotan: You're listening to Ag Issues with Neil Roberts on the Dakotan Network. Neil Robert: Talking the new spring wheat variety. Andy Heron with NCSU's, Andrew Green and Andrew, tell us more about the attributes. Andrew Green: Yeah, Andy Heron is kind of a standout in this year's variety trial because it's extremely early maturity so it's one of the first varieties in our statewide trial to head. And it typically finishes and gets through rainfall very quickly. So we think this is important in a year like this. Where everyone across the entire state had troubles getting into the field. There were a lot of people trying to decide whether to stick with their plans to plant wheat even because things got so late and our selection for earlier maturity really should shine in a year like this where we're going to be up against it with fall harvest of other crops. And we don't want to get into that period where we're going to get wet tough straw, low combined hours and difficult getting the wheat out of the field. So that early maturity, we think it's going to be really very useful. Neil Robert: All right. Excellent stuff. Thanks for that, Andrew. And that concludes this edition. Until next time. I'm Neil Roberts. The Dakotan: You're listening to the Dakotan Network. Real. Honest. Local news.
