March 10, 2017
CapitalPress.com
3
Perennial grain offers westside farmers options
By MARGARETT WATERBURY
On the Cover
For the Capital Press
New Tritipyrum crosses grow
in a field last summer.
Photo courtesy of Colin
Curwen-McAdams
Courtesy of Washington State University
Graduate research assistant
Colin Curwen-McAdams displays
the new wheat-wheatgrass hybrid
species, Tritipyrum aaseae.
ple interested in the flavor
and the story. They want the
food they’re producing to
be reflective of agricultural
and environmental steward-
ship,” he says.
For example, one line of
Tritipyrum has a blue-green
seed color.
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itized regional adaptation.
The team is currently work-
ing with numerous lines from
stable crosses of bread wheat
and Thinopyrum, but devel-
oping a truly robust perennial
remains elusive.
“It’s still a challenge to get
something a farmer can real-
ly count on in the field, es-
pecially in cold winters like
this one,” Curwen-McAdams
says.
Researchers have been
multipurpose perennial grain
crop remains tantalizing for
researchers and west-of-the-
Cascades growers.
Support from buyers such
as brewers, maltsters and
bakers has also buoyed the
project.
“There are a lot of peo-
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MOUNT
VERNON,
Wash. — Colin Cur-
wen-McAdams is a Ph.D.
candidate working under
Stephen Jones at Washington
State University.
He’s spent the last sever-
al years working on breed-
ing projects that attempt to
create a perennial grain crop
by making crosses between
wheat and wheatgrass.
Just don’t call it perennial
wheat.
“We’re not calling it
perennial wheat,” Cur-
wen-McAdams
laughs.
“When I say that, people
think they know what I’m
talking about. Perennial
wheat, this magical crop of
wheat that grows back, like a
fairy tale. Perennial wheat is
a wonderful idea. But there’s
no alignment between that
and what I’m actually work-
ing with.”
The new crop is called
Tritipyrum, a fusion of the
scientific names of its par-
ents, Triticum (wheat) and
Thinopyrum (wheatgrass).
Its goal is to meet the needs
of Western Washington and
Oregon farmers in need of a
grain for their rotational pro-
gram.
“Here in the Skagit Valley,
there are a lot of high-value
crops in rotation, and nobody
is primarily a grain farmer,”
Curwen-McAdams
says.
“People here don’t really
want to grow wheat. What
they want is a grain in their
rotation to add organic mat-
ter, break up soil tilth after
heavy cultivation, and reduce
the amount of tillage in years
they’re not growing heavy-
till crops. And, we want it to
have utility as a grain crop as
well as a feed and forage crop
for livestock.”
The new crosses have
been made primarily at
Washington State Universi-
ty’s Mount Vernon Research
and Extension Center, and
selection rounds have prior-
trying for about 100 years to
breed perennial grain crops
by hybridizing wheat with
perennial relatives.
“The fact that we’re not
surrounded by them tells you
how difficult that is,” Cur-
wen-McAdams says.
Yet the dream of a hardy,
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