07/27/06 Research on reseeding winter wheat

07/27/06 Research on reseeding winter wheat

Farm and Ranch July 27, 2006 The normal winter wheat planting time for the very dry parts of eastern Washington is mid to late August. But as Washington State University winter wheat breeder Stephen Jones explains, many times farmers end up having to reseed later. Jones: "A lot of times we will have thundershowers then and get crusting or we will have very dry situations, or both, where the wheat will have a very difficult time emerging." So growers may reseed in September or October. Jones: "And we don't know how the varieties do then if we don't plant then. So we have added a late nursery to the Lind Field Station and that was at the request of several growers to see how the late planted wheat does compared to the early stuff in terms of varietal difference." Jones says researchers should have some information for growers this fall. Jones: "We don't know anything yet although we see obvious differences. Varieties like Buchanan and things like that do better planting late. The farmers tell us that. And we can see that. But we know we will get some good results for the growers out of that even after just one year. So we will know this fall what type of trends we see." Some other research at WSU is looking at the interrelationship among the quantity of rain on soil crusting and winter wheat emergence as affected by surface residue cover. Preliminary results show wheat seedling emergence was more adversely affected by rain occurring five days after planting versus three days and versus one day after planting. In other words, the worst situation is to have rain occur just before seedlings are due to emerge from the soil. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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