Colorado Wheat Update

Colorado Wheat Update

It was a convergence of different issues —- more wheat viruses, late hard freezes and lots of moisture in May that affected this year’s results of Colorado’s hard winter wheat harvest. Although the issue of Stripe Rust is probably the biggest story as Colorado State University Soil and Crop Science’s Wheat Breeder Dr. Scott Haley shares ??Haley: “We had stripe rust here as more severe than any year since it really first appeared for as a problem in 2001. It was all the way from Northeast to Southeast Colorado then moving on up to the Front Range of Colorado. It was a really high level of infection. We don’t have a lot of highly resistant varieties out in production in Colorado. I think our wheat producers — because we haven’t had these problems year in and year out — but people really don’t realize that if we have the right environment, and we have susceptible wheat varieties and we have the pathogen, the Stripe Rust — it can be devastating. There was a lot of fungicide applied in Colorado as well as around the region. Unfortunately, a lot of it was applied too late and so it did a lot of damage. But those producers that got it on it time, are reporting 90 to 100 bushels per acre.”
Late last week Dr. Haley said that they were just wrapping up harvesting of their wheat trials and that the recent drier weather had helped.

 

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