InterGrain’s northern WA territory manager Richard Marsland and noodle wheat breeder Dr Jayfred Godoy launching Splendid wheat at the Mingenew Irwin Group demonstration site this week. The splendid fairywren is native to much of Australia, including WA’s graingrowing areas, and is depicted in Splendid’s promotional material.

INTERGRAIN has added Splendid to its range of Australian Noodle Wheats available to Western Australian growers as of next season.

Marketed as a quick-mid maturing, high-yielding and broadly adapted variety, it was launched at the Mingenew Irwin Group Sandplain Field Day on Wednesday.

Named to reflect its exceptional qualities, Splendid also boasts robust disease resistance, and superior ANW end-use quality attributes, meeting the needs of both growers and noodle processors.

InterGrain udon noodle wheat breeder Jayfred Godoy said Splendid builds on the success of Ninja, providing growers with impressive yield potential, stability and good quality, similar to Ninja.

“Trialed as IGW8220, Splendid consistently excelled in the noodle wheat breeding program with outstanding yields, averaging 5 percent higher than Ninja and 3pc higher than the benchmark Hard wheat Scepter,” Dr Godoy said.

“Being a quick-mid maturing variety, Splendid can be sown from mid-May, aligning with later planting opportunities similar to Ninja.

“With last year’s release of the mid-slow maturing Firefly, and now Splendid in the quick-mid maturity class, noodle wheat growers now have new high-yielding noodle wheats suitable for late-April to end-of-May sowing.”

Splendid’s provisional disease-resistance ratings include moderately resistant to moderately susceptible for stripe rust, powdery mildew, and yellow leaf spot, and moderately susceptible for leaf rust.

Its grain-quality profile is similar to Ninja.

WA has been producing high-quality noodle wheat for udon markets for over four decades, earning global recognition for its ability to grow grain that perfectly matches the preferences of udon noodle consumers in Japan and South Korea.

Last year, InterGrain representatives traveled to both countries to share information about InterGrain’s new generation of noodle varieties.

“We were pleased that during our trip, Splendid received the tick of approval from the Japanese market, along with new mid-slow maturing noodle wheat Firefly,” InterGrain chief executive officer Tress Walmsley said.

“InterGrain has strong relationships with Japanese and Korean udon processors and scientists to ensure its unique noodle wheat-breeding program is tailored to continually improve noodle colour and texture for the premium export market,” Ms Walmsley said.

At the launch of Splendid, local growers were invited to test their noodle-slurping abilities at a noodle sensory workshop led by the Australian Export Grains Innovation Centre wheat quality and technical markets manager Dr Larisa Cato.

Source: InterGrain