Data from the WSU wheat variety test program along with
spatially interpolated historic weather records present a unique
opportunity to compare wheat variety performance across time and
Washington State geography. A key assumption in this analysis takes
wheat variety to be genetically constant year-over-year. This
assumption allows us to separate breeding versus farm-level
productivity gains. Furthermore, across the wide variety of climate
regions within Washington State, productivity gains can be measured
for different climate regions, allowing a unique contribution to the
body of literature attempting to differentiate the various technology
contributions to farm productivity.
Analysis of breeder contributions to wheat productivity gains are
then applied to state-wide USDA productivity data and determine the
economic benefit provided by the wheat variety improvements to
average $1.8M per year (2010 dollars)