04/12/05 Robert Allen plant breeding symposium

Washington Ag April 12, 2005 Next Monday April 18th, Washington State University is hosting the first Robert E. Allan Plant Breeding Symposium. Allen retired from the Agricultural Research Service in Pullman in 1996 and WSU winter wheat breeder Steve Jones, says the symposium recognizes Allen's longtime and continuing contributions to WSU and the Pacific Northwest's wheat industry. Jones: "Madsen was a wheat that Bob released. It was the most widely grown wheat in Oregon, Idaho and Washington for all of the 1990`s. So, for ten years there, he had the number one wheat." As for the symposium agenda, Jones says; Jones: "We are bringing in three speakers from the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, and Iowa State University, to tell us what the lastest is in plant breeding nationwide." Jones says all three speakers will offer ideas on how to sustain agriculture well into the future with the use of traditional and modern plant breeding techniques. The symposium which is sponsored by the departments of Crop and Soil Sciences and Plant Pathology is free and open to the public. It will be from one p.m. to five p.m. April 18th in room C107 of Johnson Hall at WSU Pullman. I'm Bob Hoff.