MOORHEAD, Minn. -- A series of Fall Update Meetings featured the release of 2008 wheat variety trial data, as well as Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers' push for a vote to increase in the state's wheat checkoff.
MAWG wants the checkoff to increase from the current 1 cent a bushel to a 0.5 percent of net market value level to fund research that can improve grower yields and returns. A total of about 150 producers attended a series of eight meetings.
Jochum Wiersma, small grains specialist at the University of Minnesota-Crookston, discussed variety data that often isn't presented to growers until December or January. Wiersma says eight varieties now have some significant resistance to a moderate infestation to fusarium head blight (scab). But he notes that when there are severe epidemics, there will be some damage.
"You're infinitely better off with these than with more susceptible varieties," he says.
Weather-based prediction models give some sense of the risk during the growing season, but that's after varieties are selected. Wiersma acknowledges there is a "negative correlation" between straw strength and most of the top picks for top yields.
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Varieties that were among the best overall in 2008 included Briggs, Faller, Glenn, Howard, Kelby, Knudson, Kuntz, RB07, Steele-ND, but most have pluses and minuses that should be factored in.
Expanding testing?
Jim Anderson, the wheat breeder for the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, says that if the checkoff is approved, he plans to expand the program. He would increase the lines tested from 300 crosses currently to 500 crosses in a year and double preliminary yield trial lines from 370 to 740.
Anderson plans to increase the number of second-year testing locations from the current three to about eight. He says a portion of those lines would be "fungicide-protected lines." He expects a full expansion of the program likely would cut a year off of the average seven- to nine-year for producing a wheat variety.
He says the breeding focus during the past 30 years has been increasing disease protection, but that's had an unintentional effect of capping yields at current levels. He says the industry needs a breakthrough and hasn't had one since the semi-dwarf wheat in the 1970s. Improving wheat varieties because of quality, straw strength and disease resistance. He says the industry needs a breakthrough and hasn't had one since the semi-dwarf wheat in the 1970s.
Charla Hollingsworth is a University of Minnesota Extension Service plant pathologist, based in Crookston. She noted an increase in the importance of "bacterial stripe" disease in 2008, which can be mistaken to other leaf-spotting diseases.
One problem with the bacterial stripe, Hollingsworth says, is that it is not susceptible to fungicide management, and the bactericides available are expensive, untested and potentially controversial because they are, in essence, antibiotics.
"The best thing would be to build resistance in varieties, and right now, we don't have information about resistance -- just grower observations about the ones that are susceptible," she says.
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Hollingsworth says some farmers in Minnesota's Hendrum and Roseau areas reported fields that were decimated by bacterial stripe in 2008 -- cutting yields to 20 to 30 bushels per acre on certain varieties, including Freyr.
Hollingsworth reminds growers the value of "shopping around" for elevators can maximize high-quality and minimize lower-quality wheat. She offers a hypothetical comparison of prices for various wheat varieties when sold at two elevators -- one in northwest Minnesota and the other in northeast North Dakota as of Oct. 2. The elevators had different bids, but one had no premiums for high-protein wheat and the other had protein premiums and steeper discounts for low-protein wheat.
"I can say that if you grow varieties with traits you value, if you're only growing for yield and straw strength, shop around when you sell, or hold your grain if you have storage space," she says. "Manipulate the system so that you're not the loser."
Crop treatment
Hollingsworth cautions farmers against using fungicides as a "prophylactic," or preventative treatment. She noted that trials indicated no significant yield or quality response to fungicides in the 2007 and 2008 crop years, when disease pressure was low. In the 2008 trials, there was only a 2-in-5 likelihood of having a sufficient response in yield to pay for the fungicide applications.
Growers will be popular with fungicide sales people if they apply fungicides, that way, but they don't need to, she says.
The vote on the checkoff is 3 to 6 p.m. Dec. 10 and 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Prairie Grains Conference at the Alerus Center in Grand Forks, N.D. Minnesota residents who grew any wheat in 2007 or 2008 are eligible to vote.
The group's goal is to increase wheat yields by 27 percent in the next 15 years.
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Art Brandli, a Warroad, Minn., producer and board member of the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, says wheat will continue to fall behind corn and soybean competition if it doesn't increase investment. The new funding would allow research to increase from 32 percent of the council's current budget to 66 percent in 2010. He says a checkoff increase would make the Minnesota wheat industry qualify for more matching grants through the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
