Former CSU Wheat Breeder Dr. Scott Haley developed the ideas for WheatTrials.com. The current online version of the database was developed by James Hamilton in 2013. Since James left CSU in 2014, Scott Haley has curated and maintained the underlying databases, added various features, and fixed bugs.
	WheatTrials.com was originally launched as the "Colorado Wheat Variety Database" in 2000. Since its initial release, the database has been made available under various platforms: Lasso (obsolete) Dec 2000 to Oct 2005 Filemaker (download, USB stick) Oct 2005 to Oct 2013 PHP/SQL Oct 2013 to present The database is now served using PHP, a widely-used open-source general-purpose scripting language.
The database originally included only trial data from the Colorado State University Crops Testing Program. Data from other public Great Plains testing programs were then added – 2001 (Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming), 2005 (Oklahoma), Texas (2006), Montana and South Dakota (2016). Beginning in 2016, publicly-available private company data (Limagrain Cereal Seeds, Syngenta-Agripro) from Wheat Varieties for Kansas and the Great Plains have been added. As the scope of the data resources expanded, the Web address (URL) for the database was changed from RamWheatDB.com to WheatTrials.com though both URLs remain active.
	The primary rationale for developing the database was to provide an easily-accessible tool to wheat producers, crop consultants, researchers, and anybody else to help make better variety selection decisions. Both research and practical experience have shown that better decisions are made when data from multiple locations over multiple years are used. This basic principle is the underlying rationale for the "Multiple Location Trial Data" and "Head-to-Head Comparisons" features of the database. We encourage comments and suggestions for further improvement of this resource.