“Interact With Growers and Listen To What They Have To Say”

That mantra has guided NDSU spring wheat breeder Richard Frohberg for over 36 years.  Frohberg retires in February, 2002, and recalls his wheat breeding accomplishments and challenges.

By David Boehm

Dr. Richard C. Frohberg well remembers one of his first field days as the hard red spring wheat breeder for North Dakota State University. He recalls being “overly enthusiastic about semi-dwarf wheat,” which Williston, N.D. area farmers felt was not suitable for dryland production.  After his presentation, experiment station director Ernie French organized a meeting between the new wheat breeder and leading area wheat producers who kindly told him their needs for wheat varieties in western North Dakota.  Frohberg says he has not forgotten that experience, which helped him realize the necessity of constant interaction with N.D. growers in developing new wheat cultivars.

Now, 36 years later, Frohberg is retiring as the hard red spring wheat breeder at NDSU.

Growing up on a Kansas farm, Frohberg remembers walking the family’s winter wheat fields with his father telling him that if he wanted to attend college, he would have to find a job off the farm and earn the money to pay for tuition. This was back in the early 1950’s, when wheat fields were being devastated by wheat stem rust. So he found work building lines for the Santa Fe Railroad to earn tuition money. Frohberg finds it ironic that the wheat rust epidemics that prompted him to work on the rail is one of the diseases that he would spend much of his life developing resistance for in HRSW.

Frohberg received his bachelor’s degree at Kansas State University in 1958, and both of his masters and doctorate degrees at Iowa State University in the early1960’s. He came to NDSU as a wheat geneticist in 1964, and has served as HRSW breeder since 1966. Since then, he has developed 21 HRSW cultivars, 1 hard white spring wheat cultivar, as well as early collaboration with his predecessors on three more.  His 22 cultivars are proudly exhibited in small glass bottles in a display in his office, a gift from his staff. North Dakota state law allows for 30% of royalties earned from seed sales for personal use by the breeder, yet Frohberg has directed all monies back to various wheat projects for the benefit of ND producers.

At his start, the major objective of NDSU’s program was developing stem rust resistance. According to Frohberg, he collaborated closely with USDA pathologists and also NDSU cereal scientists, “because bread baking quality was very important.” 

Frohberg recalls “the various people on the wheat breeding team” as among his fondest memories as NDSU’s spring wheat breeder. These colleagues included all involved in wheat breeding, pathology, and cereal science. He also recalls the changes in mechanization, especially plot maintenance and harvesting, and weed control with grass herbicides rather than by hand pulling. 

Genetic gain in yield is one of his proudest accomplishments.  Frohberg says he wants to be remembered for “genetically improved germplasm that has been produced for spring wheat, whether released cultivars, or parental lines. (It’s) living material.” He explains that cultivars eventually are replaced by newer varieties, but germplasm remains in breeding programs and cultivars for many years. 

Two other achievements he is proud of are semi-dwarf cultivars adapted to N.D. with good bread baking quality, and developing stability for stem rust resistance.  He noted that this stem rust resistance still exists, even though race changes in the rust pathogen have developed.  He is quick to give credit to others in the university and USDA systems for a team effort in this accomplishment.

Frohberg sums up the biggest challenge he faced during his tenure in three words: “Fusarium Head Blight.” He says that FHB or scab “has been a real challenge because of its urgency.”  He talks about the millions in losses in the spring wheat economy due to scab, and how it has even played a factor in some families getting out of farming, and affecting whether some young people will get into farming.  As a  coup de grâce to his breeding effort directed against FHB, Frohberg developed the cultivar Alsen, released in 2000, which is the first cultivar released by NDSU with FHB tolerance.

He believes there are two imminent challenges to the future of wheat breeding.  The first is the emergence of patenting breeding material and processes that has evolved with the introduction of biotechnology. Even aside from public acceptance of biotechnology, Frohberg believes that patent protection issues will continue to be a real challenge for public breeding programs. A second challenge for wheat breeding, he says, is the emergence of molecular marker selection for wheat traits and developing efficient strategies for implementing them in breeding programs.

Frohberg is also concerned about an erosion of appropriated funding for wheat breeding research. This has created a necessity to rely on grant funding, which has very specific objectives that need to be followed.  “The success of a good, productive breeding program should not be based on grant writing,” he says, adding that a person can be a good wheat breeder and not necessarily a good grant proposal writer.

Volunteer activities will take up more of Frohberg’s time after he retires in February, 2002. “You can’t play golf everyday, and you can’t go fishing everyday,” he says.  Frohberg and his wife Norma are also planning on traveling and spending time with their six grandchildren.

His advice to new wheat breeders, which he has already shared with his replacement, Dr. Mohamed Mergoum, is something those Willis-ton area producers told him at the beginning of his career. “Interact with wheat growers in N.D., and listen to what they have to say,” he says.

Mergoum, originally from Morocco, started his position as NDSU’s new hard red spring wheat breeder in late January, 2002. He received his Master’s Degree at the University of Minnesota, under now retired barley breeder Dr. Don Rasmusson. Mergoum received his Doctorate from Colorado State University. Since 1982, Mergoum has held various positions in Mexico and Morocco as bread wheat, triticale, and durum breeder. He most recently was Senior Scientist for winter wheat breeding with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) conducting research in Turkey.