Project Title: Winter Wheat Breeding and Genetics

Maintenance of Wheat Breeding and Quality Assessment Research Equipment

(2010 Special Project)

Principal Investigators:

William Berzonsky, Winter Wheat Breeder, Plant Science Dept., SDSU, Brookings

Karl Glover, Spring Wheat Breeder, Plant Science Dept., SDSU, Brookings

Padu Krishnan, Dept. of Nutrition, Food Science & Hospitality, SDSU, Brookings

Project Objective:

The objective of this project is to establish a fund to maintain and repair wheat breeding equipment to avoid potential costly repairs and/or replacement of equipment.

Justification:

By necessity, the SDSU wheat breeding and end-use quality assessment programs utilize specialized equipment to conduct research relating to the development of varieties with superior agronomic and quality performance. Along with other field equipment, this includes such items as specialized seed sorters, seed planters, portable computers, and combines the program uses with other quality equipment including such items as a small flour mills, mixographs, mixolabs, and NIR protein analysis equipment. This equipment is essential to the successful development of new wheat varieties. Consequently, although all pieces of equipment may not be in continuous use throughout the year, they are utilized by many researchers and support personnel associated with both the SDSU Spring and Winter Wheat Breeding Programs. It is critical that this specialized equipment be maintained in proper working order so that experiments can be conducted to rigorous, repeatable standards so that the data collected will be accurate.

Unfortunately and all too often, field and lab equipment will malfunction or lose accuracy with use. Typically happening at the most inopportune time, a malfunction can require costly repairs or even complete equipment replacement. At this point, it is often difficult for breeding and quality project Principal Investigators to easily and rapidly identify funding to cover the cost of repair or replacement. It may even necessitate that funding be shifted from other important project research areas or that repairs or a replacement be delayed. We believe that this problem can be addressed by establishing an equipment maintenance fund to be available and utilized by the SDSU wheat breeding and quality assessment programs. It is believed that such a fund will only become more important as the new Wheat Quality Lab is established at SDSU and as both the SDSU Spring and Winter Wheat Breeding Programs rely more heavily on the analyses performed in this lab. Furthermore, utilizing the fund for conducting more routine maintenance is expected to help avoid some costly repairs or replacements altogether.

Materials and Methods:

We envision that the equipment maintenance fund would be available and utilized by both the SDSU Spring and Winter Wheat Breeding Programs and by the SDSU Wheat Quality Lab during FY10. Detailed records would be maintained throughout FY10 to document use of the funds, to plan for future needs, and to adjust potential future requests to sustain the fund for essential equipment maintenance/repair. Maintenance funds would only be available to repair or service equipment that is utilized by all of the research programs, and maintenance of equipment exclusively utilized by a single research program would remain the responsibility of that program.