WILTON, N.D. — Central North Dakota hasn’t had the most ideal growing season in 2020, and that’s led to a mixed bag of crop conditions.

Jamie Schurhamer, agronomy lead for Hefty Seed of Hurdsfield and Wilton, was standing in a field of Spitfire spring wheat on July 20. The field was planted in early May, a little later than ideal for spring wheat. Usually, the earlier cereal crops are seeded the better, giving them adequate time to grow and develop before the heat of summer sets in. But this year, that early drought in central North Dakota put stress on crops that went in on time.

“April seeded cereals look really bad,” Schurhamer said.

But the field of Spitfire was able to hold on until the rains came. The rains, however, came in such quantity that it put a different strain on crops.

“Our earlier crops are a little beat up, and then when we did get rain, we really produced a lot of disease environment,” Schurhamer said.

He pointed out brown spots on the flagleaf of plants, a result of disease stress. But looking at the heads on the wheat, he still anticipates 60 to 65 bushel per acre yields. That’s less than the target of 80 to 85 bushels, but still average. He also anticipates protein will be high.

Hefty Seed of Hurdsfield and Wilton has planted a number of plots of different crops at their Wilton facility, located at the intersection of Highways 83 and 36.

Across Highway 83 to the west from the Hefty shop is a large durum field. On July 20, it was all headed out and in the early stages of turning from green to gold. Schurhamer said there is more durum in central North Dakota than last year because of market premiums. The heads on the durum in the Hefty field aren’t as long as Schurhamer would like — 12 spikelets versus 16 — but it’s still a promising field.

“What we’re seeing is a nice full head,” he said. “I still think we’ve got a pretty good potential up here, 70 to 80 bushel durum,” he said.

The field is a few weeks off of harvest, and quality still needs to be protected.

“I think we’ve got a really nice durum crop,” Schurhamer said.

Wheat and durum used to be kings in central North Dakota. Corn and soybeans, over the years, have cut into acreage for those crops, as ethanol plants provided corn markets and soybean varieties improved to account for drier conditions. But, Schurhamer said, wheat and durum still play an important role.

“When everything is down, if you have more than just corn and beans, you have more opportunity to turn profits, more market potential,” he said. “We’re lucky enough to be able to grow a lot of crops in this area.”

Research continues at Hefty

Besides testing out their own seeds, Hefty also is doing research plots on seeds with a variety of products from partnering companies.

A few plots over from the Spitfire plot is one of Murdock spring wheat that has been treated with a variety of Bayer products. The field was planted much later than normal so that it would have been near maturity in September, at a planned and canceled field day. While the field day won’t happen, Schurhamer and his staff are still doing weekly tissue testing for levels of nutrients in the field. In part because of how the late planting coincided with the late-coming rains, the plot looks promising.

The tissue sampling isn’t the only research going on at Hefty. They’re also trying to see how planting corn next to shorter crops — to maximize sunlight on the corn — influences yields in both crops. Hefty is trying soybeans next to corn while others are trying wheat next to corn. Schurhamer said it’s promising research that he could see boosting corn yields 25% to 30% with yields of the shorter crops taking only a small hit.