AWBI grain quality specialist, Tremayne Watts, said Crusader has been upgraded to Australian Prime Hard (APH) in Queensland, central and southern New South Wales, whilst Magenta has been upgraded to Australian Premium White (APW) for Victoria.

"As the 2008–09 harvest has commenced across Australia, the upgrades on both of these varieties has been delayed until next harvest," Mr Watts said.

"However by announcing the upgrade now it allows growers to consider their seed requirements for next year."

Information about Magenta and Crusader is available from the NVT website, which provides independent and accurate results on the performance of recently released grain and field crop varieties from trials conducted across Australia.

The upgrade follows the final meeting of the AWB International Variety Classification Panel, whose role is to assess the quality attributes and milling characteristics of wheat varieties.

Wheat classification is the categorisation of a wheat variety into grades based on processing and end product quality.

The Classification Process aims to deliver grain of consistent physical quality, processing performance and end-product quality to customers and end-users.

In 2008 the AWB International classification panel has assessed 140 wheat varieties across the 7 classification regions in Australia.

Twenty new varieties have been commercialised and released to growers during this time.

Following the introduction of changes in wheat marketing arrangements that were introduced on 1 July 2008, GRDC has agreed to undertake management of wheat variety classification for 2009 and 2010 and is currently working to develop a new model for the management of wheat classification.