NEWS for North Dakotans
Agriculture Communication, North Dakota State University
7 Morrill Hall, Fargo, ND 58105-5665
January 20, 2000
The North Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station at North Dakota State University has released two navy bean varieties tentatively named Arthur and Commander. These cultivars have been specifically bred for production in the northern Great Plains. Both varieties will be subject to the 1994 amendments of the Plant Variety Protection Act with the Title V option.
Developed from a series of crosses involving breeding lines from Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin, Arthur also has parentage that includes the navy bean varieties Upland, Neptune and Fleetwood, says Ken Grafton, dry bean breeder in the NDSU Department of Plant Sciences.
Arthur has a maturity equal to the variety Norstar, another NDSU release that currently occupies 35 percent and 39 percent of the navy bean acreage in North Dakota and Minnesota, respectively. Arthur has canning quality equal to Norstar and Mayflower; its seed size is slightly larger than Norstar, currently the region's leading navy bean variety. Arthur is very erect, has better resistance to lodging, and has greater white mold and rust resistance than Norstar. In 27 trials covering five years at 14 locations in North Dakota, Michigan and Washington state, Arthur outyielded Norstar by 4.2 percent, on average.
Commander is a selection from a cross between the navy cultivar Avanti, and UI906, a very early erect black bean. Commander has a semi-erect floppy growth habit similar to Norstar, and it matures about two days earlier than Norstar. Likewise, Commander has a canning quality about equal to Norstar, but its seed size is larger than Norstar's. Commander has better tolerance to white mold than Norstar because of its porous canopy, but its tolerance is not as good as Arthur's. In trials similar to those used to evaluate Arthur's performance, Commander outyielded Norstar by 15 percent, on average.
Both Arthur and Commander will significantly influence navy bean production in Minnesota and North Dakota, as well as other areas in the region, says Al Schneiter, chair of the NDSU plant sciences department. He expects both varieties to replace a major portion of the acreage currently devoted to Norstar, as well as other navy bean cultivars.
Focusing only on its comparative yield advantage, Schneiter estimates that if Arthur were to replace 50 percent of the Norstar acreage in North Dakota, the state's dry bean producers would be able to generate an additional $832,000 in revenue, based on the current historic prices for navy beans. Under that same scenario, Commander and its comparative yield advantage over Norstar would on generate an additional $3 million in annual revenue for North Dakota producers.
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Sources: Ken Grafton (701) 231-8145
Al Schneiter (701) 231-8137
Editor: Dean Hulse (701) 231-6136