By Scout Nelson
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s small-grains breeding program has earned national recognition for developing a new wheat variety with outstanding baking and milling quality. The hard red winter wheat line, known as NE20620, received the Miller’s Choice Award 2026 from the Wheat Quality Council.
The award recognizes wheat varieties with superior performance in milling, mixing, and baking. The Wheat Quality Council conducts detailed blind testing through experts from the baking and grain processing industries. Around 25 wheat lines from universities and private companies participated in the annual competition, but Nebraska’s wheat variety stood out for its overall quality.
The wheat line offers several important benefits. It provides strong yields for producers and has excellent resistance to diseases that commonly affect wheat crops. In addition to field performance, the variety also showed high quality during flour production and bread baking tests. Experts evaluated the wheat by examining the loaf shape, bread texture, loaf rise, and flour color.
“It has fantastic disease resistance, great yields and great end-use quality,” said Katherine Frels, assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture and director of the Small Grains Breeding and Genetics Program.
Researchers explained that the award highlights the success of combining advanced breeding methods with grain quality testing. The university’s grain quality laboratory played an important role in studying wheat’s milling performance, protein levels, dough mixing quality, and baking characteristics. Researchers also tested how the flour performed in products such as bread, noodles, and tortillas.
Another Nebraska wheat line, NEB-148-42, was also recognized as one of the strong contenders in the competition. The university is now increasing seed production of NE20620 and expects to release the variety in 2027. Funding support for the project came from the Agricultural Research Division and the Nebraska Wheat Board.
“It’s really a big collaborative effort,” Frels said. “I would not be able to have lines that meet this many quality metrics if we didn’t have Lan and Marc running that quality lab. It's not easy to mill, mix and bake wheat. They do a fantastic job of testing lines for me every year.”
Photo Credit: istock-zhaojiankang
Categories: Nebraska, Crops, Wheat, General