Registration of ‘Wahoo’ Wheat

‘Wahoo’ (Reg. no. CV-920, PI 619098) is a hard red winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cultivar developed cooperatively by the Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station and the USDA-ARS and released in 2000 by the developing institutions and the Wyoming Agricultural Experiment Station. Wahoo was released primarily for its superior adaptation to rainfed (syn. nonirrigated) wheat production regions in eastern Nebraska and broad adaptation to rainfed wheat production regions in Wyoming and Nebraska. Where it is adapted, Wahoo should be a good replacement cultivar for ‘Arapahoe’ (Baenziger et al., 1989). Wahoo is genetically complementary to ‘2137’, ‘Alliance’, ‘Buckskin’, ‘Jagger’, ‘Pronghorn’, and ‘Windstar’. It is noncomplementary to ‘Abilene’ (PI 511307), Arapahoe, ‘Culver’, ‘Millennium’, ‘Niobrara’, and ‘Vista’. Wahoo was selected from the cross Arapahoe*2/Abilene, which was made in 1988. The F1 was grown greenhouse and the F2 and the to F3 generations were advanced by the bulk breeding method at Mead, NE. Wahoo is an F3:4 line that was visually selected for its phenotypic uniformity and perceived agronomic merit, winter survival, maturity, and general resistance to diseases observed in the field. From the F5 to release, the line was advanced with yearly rouging to remove phenotypic variants. Wahoo was evaluated as NE94654 in Nebraska yield nurseries starting in 1995, in the Northern Regional Performance Nursery in 1998 and 1999, and in Nebraska cultivar performance trials in 1999 and 2000. In the Nebraska cultivar performance trials, it has performed well throughout most of Nebraska and Wyoming, yet is best adapted to eastern Nebraska. The average Nebraska rainfed yield of Wahoo of 3620 kg ha−1 (27 environments) was greater than the yields of Alliance (3550 kg ha−1), Culver (3510 kg ha−1), and Millennium (3580 kg ha−1). In Wyoming, Wahoo yielded an average of 2590 kg ha−1 (9 environments), which was superior to Buckskin (2390 kg ha−1) and Pronghorn (2380 kg ha−1). Wahoo was tested in the Northern Regional Performance Nursery in 1998 and 1999. It ranked 16th of 28 entries in 1998 (17 environments) and 6th of 29 entries in 1999 (18 environments) and averaged 225 kg ha−1 more yield than Abilene. Wahoo has not performed well under irrigation and is not recommended for use in irrigated productions systems