TURKEY WHEAT: THE CORNERSTONE OF AN EMPIRE

Abstract

This is the one-hundredth anniversary for Turkey wheat. This variety more than any other established the hard red winter wheat industry, answered for all time the critics who doubted the future of wheat as a crop on the Plains, and was the standard of quality on which the grain and milling industry of the Southwest was based. Turkey, like a famous herd sire, has contributed an ancestral stamp to modern varieties, for no variety of hard wheat grown in the Southwest today lacks this lineageTriumph, Scouts Kaw, Wichita, Lancer, Warrior, and Sturdy all have Turkey ancestry. In 1972, Russia purchased 400 million bushels of hard red winter wheat from the United States to supplement their supplies. Most of this grain was a blend of modern varieties, the offspring of the original Turkey brought here from Russia so long ago. The Agricultural Experiment Stations of Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas and the Agricultural Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, released a new variety in 1971, named Centurk to commemorate a century of Turkey wheat in this country. At several places in the Midwest, plans are under way for celebrations to commemorate the original introduction, and so it seems appropriate that at this symposium the story of Tllrkey be reviewed. Both authors are agronomists and grew up on farms in south central Kansas when Turkey vas the leading variety of wheat grown. We worked as student assistants in wheat breeding while we were in college and then spent many years breeding and testing wheats for the hard red winter wheat region o£ the United States. Turkey and Kharkof, a similar but later introduction, were the standards used in our yield tests. We have personal reasons for being nostalgic about a great wheat varietyTurkey. In this paper we will look at the Turkey story from an agrono mist's viewpoint. We have studied events as recorded by many historians