Adaptability of Northern Plains Solid Stemmed Wheat to Northwest Kansas.

In anticipation of wheat stem sawfly arriving as an economic pest to wheat production in the Central High Plains, multiple solid-stemmed wheat varieties were evaluated across 5 site-years in Northwest and West-Central Kansas to evaluate their adaptability. Average grain yields across these 5 site-years ranged from 26 to 69 bu ac^-1, providing a wide range of yield potentials   Solid-stemmed varieties often yielded similarly to locally adapted varieties.  In "worst case" scenarios, the lowest yielding solid-stemmed wheat produced 60 to 81% of the yield as a set of locally adapted varieties. Differences in biomass accumulation and yield components were also evaluated. It appears that planting solid-stemmed varieties from the Northern Plains could be a viable "stop-gap" measure until locally adapted varieties with the solid-stem trait become available.