MANHATTAN, Kan. – Four individuals who have contributed significantly to agriculture and the wheat industry will be recognized during the International Wheat Quality Conference, May 20-24.

Donald Wissman, president of the Alliance from 1996 to 1998, will receive the Distinguished Service in Agriculture award, given by the Kansas State University College of Agriculture.

Career awards for wheat quality improvement will be awarded to Walter Bushuk, Karl Finney and Rella Dwyer.

The awards will be presented Wednesday, May 23 during the conference, which is being held at the Holiday Inn in Manhattan.

Wissman, of Manhattan, was a founding member of DPRA, an environmental and agricultural consulting firm and from 1987 to 1998, was that organization’s chairman of the board. From 1996 to 1999, he was president of the Grain Industry Alliance. Under his leadership, DPRA, Inc., grew from a single office in Manhattan, Kan. to one of the most recognized names in international consulting with nine offices worldwide.

He is credited with successfully managing projects in 17 countries, including waste-site cleanup and pollution prevention; water quality; wastewater treatment; and economic impact of government regulatory programs.

Bushuk, of Manitoba (Canada), is being honored for his academic contributions. An Emeritus Professor at the University of Manitoba, he is recognized internationally as a leading cereal chemist. He was born in eastern Poland, immigrated to Canada at age 10, earned a doctoral degree and joined the University of Manitoba in 1966.

He is credited with improving international wheat quality by investigating the protein composition of wheat and its interaction with other flour components during processing. His influence extends to several graduate and post-doctoral students working around the world.

Dwyer, of Chicago, is a senior vice president for technical service with The Long Company, a bakers cooperative serving 60 wholesale bakeries in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico and Venezuela; and 400 non-member bakeries, flour mills and related industries.

As a member of the baking industry team at the Wheat Quality Council, she has helped define ‘bread quality attributes,’ transferring those to wheat quality laboratories for testing of wheat breeding lines.

Finney passed away in Manhattan in February, 2001. An internationally-famed cereal chemist, he retired in 1983 after working 45 years for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s laboratory in Manhattan. He initiated the hard winter wheat quality laboratory during his tenure.

Finney developed techniques that helped define the role of each flour component. He was a pioneer in developing micro-scale dough and bread evaluations, which allowed researchers to evaluate wheat breeding lines at earlier stages of development. Two popular Kansas wheats – Karl and Karl 92 – are named in his honor.

The International Wheat Quality Conference is organized by the Grain Industry Alliance, a consortium of the American Institute of Baking, Kansas State University, DPRA, Inc., and the U.S. Grain Marketing and Production Research Center – all based in Manhattan.

For information on the International Wheat Quality Conference, visit the conference Website at http://stars.kansas.net/iwqc-ii, or call Okkyung Kim Chung at 785-776-2702 (e-mail iwqc@stars.kansas.net).