• 2020 Harvest Summary

    Observation made on our farm this wheat harvest.

    Another wheat harvest in the books, and another year of gathering data to take wheat further down the road. As we continue to advance the way we test and select wheats, it is advancing our farm’s profitability and your farm at the end of the day. We are starting to look at wheats a year or two in advance through our Strip Trial, which will give us a better indication of what will happen once those wheats go into production. So the vetting process of us selecting a wheat that makes it to production to go out to the farmer is going to have a higher confidence once it hits your field. We can have 10 wheats or 100 wheats out here, but only 3-5 wheats will make it to the top.

    I have been putting off writing this for about a week, because like 2020, I think the 2020 wheat crop is just something most would like to move past. However my glass is always 3/4 full so let’s dive in. The wheat crop for most was tough from the start. If there was enough moisture for it to come up, we didn’t get any more rain on it till December to get the slice closed up tight around the crown and the roots to set in. There was a fair amount of fallow and corn stalk wheat that just flat sat in the ground and didn’t really emerge until late January. This is one of those years where the fungicide in the seed treatment paid big dividends, in preventing seed rot, and on into crown and foot root where it took an extremely long time for the crop to get its crown roots established. Then we had some decent winter moisture and things were moving along nicely. We actually had an extremely good pollination period which helped a lot of this late thin wheat set a few extra berries, (which actually hurt some guys with their protein levels). Then the freeze event of April 12th-14th happened, and we just flat thinned out and set back the wheat crop even more. The thinning down turned out to not be that bad of a deal for the lack of rain and the heat that came at the end, but setting the crop back cost us a lot with the blast furnace that showed up 10 days early in the first part of June. For the areas that did receive some timely rains for the year the yields were very impressive, which is a big testament to the new varieties and the agronomic practices that have been implemented. The seeding rate trials were quite interesting this year. We continue to see Langin and Joe thrive at the lower populations like they always do, but the WB 4792 for the second year in a row did a bit better at the higher end, but really from 500,000 to 1 million population yields about the same on the two year history. Our Strip Trial this year continues to line up with what we see on the large scale production, so it continues to be a great proving ground to see if new varieties will make the cut, so that we are able to consistently provide you with the best wheats for Western Kansas, teamed up with agronomic advice that can put your farms yield goals at the top.

    WB4792 (CSO)

    This is our number 1 wheat for the three year average. It is a medium late maturity, with the best straw strength I have seen in a dryland wheat, has good tolerance to wheat streak mosaic virus, and good resistance to rust. It is very upright in its plant growth, with a large head set, and medium on tillering. We have seen this wheat now in just about every scenario that can happen and it always performs. As it moved up into northwest Kansas we did see some damage to the tillers in the April freeze event. As far as a seeding rate goes, I love the fact that I have cut my highest yield ever on a quarter at a 430,000 population, but in our seeding rate studies we have seen it performs all the way up to a 1,000,000 population. This is nice because you don’t have to babysit it with a low population on a year like last year where if you are planting and it may not come up right away we can bump that population up to 850,000 to make sure we get a good stand of wheat, where other wheats run the risk of getting too thick and lodging in a good year or burning up in a poor year at higher populations. For it being a medium late wheat it has great heat tolerance during grain fill and managed to carry better than average test weights this year in the blast furnace. We got to see it this year on irrigation and it performed the best in the areas it was in. I would plant it on Irrigation up to October 15th then past that, move onto WB4595. This is a very well rounded wheat that is going to be around for a while.


    WB4595 (CSO)

    This is a sister wheat to WB4792, and they share a lot of the same characteristics. It will tiller a touch more than WB4792, and is 3 to 5 days earlier on maturity. It is right there with Langin for the 2nd best three year average. The earlier maturity will allow WB4595 to go ahead and go under irrigation later into October following dry corn and should be able to pick up a few more tillers over WB4792. It has a great overall plant health package, and performed very well from Oklahoma up through Northwest Kansas this year.


    WB-Grainfield

    This is an older all-around good wheat. It has good yields, plant health, tests weights and protein. This wheat can be dropped at a lighter population planted early in a good fertility program to go for very high yields, as this wheat is the one of the best wheats out there for putting a lot of grain into the head. It is a photoperiod sensitive wheat, so in a cool spring it will act like an early and a hot spring act a little later on its maturity. It will need a flag leaf fungicide application if stripe rust shows up big, but will get away with a very slight infection. Keep this wheat away from areas where Wheat Streak Mosaic may show up.


    LCS Revere (CSO)

    This wheat has done exactly what we have wanted it to. This is one of the only true medium early wheats that is good for western Kansas. If you liked T-158 this acts a lot like it with a higher yield potential, better straw strength and a better scab score. It still carries the adult plant resistance to stripe rust, and will handle a light infection of wheat streak mosaic. It was also carrying a higher protein level than some other wheats. Like T-158, this is probably not going to win any yield contest but it is a lot closer to the top wheats now, and in a tough year will really shine.


    Joe

    Joe is a white wheat. It is a very well rounded wheat with excellent yield. It is medium late maturing, medium tall wheat, with stripe rust resistance. This wheat is caring the WSM2 gene which has resistance to wheat streak mosaic up to 68 degree, so it is not 100% but is a good tool going up against mosaic. It is a top yielder. If you can handle a white wheat this is a must have on the farm. Joe has been one of the best performing wheats following same year corn on dryland. It handled the April freeze event very good with very little plant loss.


    PG Guardian (CSO)

    I kind of broke my own rules by taking this wheat into production, without it being tested in the strip trial for a couple years, but I will tell you why. It has the best package of any wheat on the market to go up against Wheat Streak Mosaic Virus. It has the WSM2 gene like Joe and it is carrying wheat curl mite resistance like Tam 112 did. So if we have a warm up in December or February and the WSM2 gene becomes less effective during that time then the curl mite resistance should slow the spread through the field until temps cool back down. Now I am not talking total resistance here, but this is a first of its kind type of wheat with 2 modes of action against Wheat Streak Mosaic. As far as the wheat goes it is a lot like Langin with a little better straw strength. I noticed that it did not want to put the third berry on as much as the Langin did this year and that was the yield difference.


    PG Langin

    We replaced Tam 112 and Byrd with this wheat. We now have four years of history with it, and it has performed in every situation. This is a very high tillering variety. It is going to be a big dog yielder, and in the droughty years hang in and produce more wheat than you thought it should have. It is a medium maturity wheat with a medium long coleoptile. It may have a lodging issue if planted too thick, so watch your seeding rates with this variety. We have seen it yield all the way up to 120 bpa and stand just fine with a lower seeding rate. Remember to fertilize for a high yield if going into the protein market because if it’s a good wheat year it will probably out-yield your available nitrogen and struggle to have protein. It is also carrying some wheat curl mite resistance.

    The wheats above are all wheats we believe will excel on your farm. We have other wheats that we tested, some made it, and some did not. We take the wheats we sell very seriously and want to bring you the best the industry has to offer. Give us a call as we can provide you with a lot more information on how to manage each one of these wheats to provide you with the best harvest the weather will allow.

    2020 Strip Trial


    2019 Harvest Summary

    Observation made on our farm this wheat harvest.

    Another wheat harvest in the books, and another year of gathering data to take wheat further down the road. As we continue to advance the way we test and select wheats, it is advancing our farm’s profitability and your farm at the end of the day. We are starting to look at wheats a year or two in advance through our Strip Trial, which will give us a better indication of what will happen once those wheats go into production. So the vetting process of us selecting a wheat that makes it to production to go out to the farmer is going to have a higher confidence once it hits your field. We can have 10 wheats or 100 wheats out here, but only 3-5 wheats will make it to the top.

    What a wheat year, I never really thought we would break 2016 yields this quickly, but with full application of some agronomic practices, and newer varieties out, it happened. Wheat crop went in good in the fall, had plenty of winter and spring moisture--and how about those cool grain fill temps we got. Wheat that was planted past the 10th of October struggled a bit, but there was not a lot of that around. We had some cold temps that did seem to thin out the later smaller wheat. Rust showed up, but not in a big way that we would have expected with the weather we had. Very little wheat streak mosaic around, which hopefully shows since 2017 more guys are cleaning up their volunteer better.

    On to some of the fun stuff. We had a Palisade test, different fungicide, and fertilizer timings out. As far as Palisade goes it was applied right at first node with different rates of fertilizer; there was no real yield gain unless there was excessive nitrogen to go along with it, and even when we look closer with the same additional nitrogen without Palisade, yields were close to the same. What had Palisade was standing better and was a point drier on the moisture. We would never recommend a growth regulator in a drier year as it could really shorten up your wheat. We have been playing around with two fungicide applications, one at early flag leaf with just a preventative, and another shot of a curative and preventative at full flower vs our regular single application at full flag leaf. Last year was just a couple bushel increase which does not pay, and this year it was 5-7bpa, so the rate of return is not quite there for a two year average. Seeding rates continue to be a big play for us. They help with reduced lodging and buy us a little more time for a rain. As I have said before, seeding rates are directly tied to your farms fertility program and planting dates, and if you want to figure out what they are for your farm you need to have software to document them at planting time and come back in and collect the data at harvest. We recommend 3 to 4 across your farm; every variety is a little different in how they respond. Our strip trial lined up great with our overall production, so it continues to be a great proving ground for our variety selection for new upcoming wheats, especially as more CSO (No plant back) wheats are released. So if a new wheat can’t beat what it is meant to replace, it gets thrown out or tested a second year. Now to run down the varieties we have available for this year.

    WB4792 (CSO)

    This is the first big year of production and it did not disappoint. It won our strip trial last year in a very tough year and is at the top again this year. It was the best production wheat on our farm with a four bushel yield advantage over everything else. It is a Medium Late Maturity, Medium Height, by far the best straw strength. It doesn’t tiller quite as much as Joe and Langin, as we found out in our seeding rate trial, so we will definitely be 50,000 to 100,000 population higher with WB4792, especially into fallow corn stalks with a disc drill where we maybe don’t chop through the corn as much as we do through milo. We had planted it into both corn stalks and milo stalks, and we believe that since we were stretching out the seed due to a limited supply, that the lower stand count into the corn stalks definitely left some yield on the table. It probably could have been 5 to 8 bushels higher in the strip trial with the proper seeding rate. It has a good score against wheat streak mosaic virus, comparable to Langin and T158. It has good winter hardiness, and its yield history is at the top. The only real knock I have is its scab score, which we don’t have to worry about very often out here. But as it goes onto irrigated acres, if the scenario is right you would need to look at a Prosaro application at flowering. As other yield trials are coming in, it is at the top in K-State’s, Finney County, and Greely County dryland plots and won the Finney County irrigated plot. This should go on dryland and irrigated acres out here as long as it can be on irrigated by the 10th of October. If it is much past this date I would switch to something else. It has good resistance to leaf and stripe rust, however if it is a really bad rust year I would still spray it. Its overall plant health is remarkable all the way through to maturity. It puts on a very big head and has the straw strength to hold it with good test weights. It has had very good protein levels for its yield the last two years. This is one of those wheats that kind of changes the game with many great traits stacked into one wheat, and will have a long run until the next one comes along. This wheat should be on 60% of your acres. We have a good supply of it, but don’t expect it to be available much past the end of August.


    WB-Grainfield

    This is an all-around good wheat. Good yields, plant health, tests weights and protein. This wheat can be dropped at a lighter population planted early in a good fertility program to go for very high yields, as this wheat is the one of the best wheats out there for putting a lot of grain into the head. It is a photoperiod sensitive wheat, so in a cool spring it will act like an early and a hot spring act a little later on its maturity. It will need a flag leaf fungicide application if stripe rust shows up big, but will get away with it with a very slight infection. The yield history on this variety is very tough to beat.


    WB-Cedar (Irrigated Only)

    This is an early maturing variety with excellent straw, very high tillering, and yield. This is a wheat for full irrigation. It is a short wheat which makes it very well suited for irrigation. This is a good choice to follow corn taken for grain, especially late. It is moderately resistant to stripe rust leaf rust, and intermediate on tan spot. It had great test weight and protein for the year. This is a very forgiving wheat as it can help make up for some of the struggles associated with irrigated wheat.


    WB4269 (CSO)(Irrigated Only)


    This is a new wheat performing very well in its second year out. It is a lot like WB-Cedar, but has better stripe rust resistance, and improved scab resistance. It also handled the heat stress we had toward the end very well and came in with the best test weight of the irrigated varieties. I would say following corn stalks it has the best get up and go, and establishes a stand very fast. It may lean a little more than WB-Cedar but we did not have an issue with it lodging.


    LCS Revere (CSO)

    This wheat did exactly what we wanted it to. I like to call it T158 2.0. This is one of the only true medium early wheats that are good for western Kansas. If you liked T158 this acts a lot like it with a higher yield potential, better straw strength and a better scab score. It still carries the adult plant resistance to stripe rust, and will handle a light infection of wheat streak mosaic. It was also carrying a higher protein level than some other wheats. Like T158, this is probably not going to win any yield contest but it is a lot closer to the top wheats now, and in a tough year will really shine. This should be 20% to 30% of your acres to give you something that you will be able to get out and start harvest with.


    Joe

    Joe is a white wheat. It is a very well rounded wheat with excellent yield. It is medium late maturing, medium tall wheat, with stripe rust resistance. This wheat is caring the WSM2 gene which has resistance to wheat streak mosaic up to 70 degree, so it is not 100% but as good as it gets going up against mosaic. It is a top yielder. If you can handle a white wheat this is a must have on the farm.


    Langin

    We replaced Tam 112 and Byrd with this wheat. We now have three years of history with it, and it has performed in every situation. This is a very high tillering variety. It is going to be a big dog yielder, and in the droughty years hang in and produce more wheat than you thought it should have. It is a medium maturity wheat with a medium long coleoptile. It may have a lodging issue if planted too thick, so watch your seeding rates with this variety. We have seen it yield all the way up to 120 bpa and stand just fine with a lower seeding rate. Remember to fertilize for a high yield if going into the protein market because if it’s a good wheat year it will probably out-yield your available nitrogen and struggle to have protein. It is also carrying some wheat curl mite resistance.

    The wheats above are all wheats we believe will excel on your farm. We have other wheats that we tested, some made it, and some did not. We take the wheats we sell very seriously and want to bring you the best the industry has to offer. Give us a call as we can provide you with a lot more information on how to manage each one of these wheats to provide you with the best harvest the weather will allow.

    We really get to know what a wheat is like once we get it into large scale production so I will give you the breakdown of how the wheats ranked as far as our production goes to compare to the strip trial. The large farm data and the strip trial line up very comparably.

    Production Wheat Rankings

    1. WB4792
    2. Langin
    3. Joe
    4. LCS Revere
    5. WB-Grainfield

    2019 Strip Trial


    2018 Harvest Summary

    Observation made on our farm this wheat harvest.

    Another wheat harvest in the books, and another year of gathering data to take wheat further down the road. As we continue to advance the way we test and select wheats, it is advancing our farm’s profitability and your farm at the end of the day. We are starting to look at wheat varieties a year or two in advance through our Strip Trial, which will give us a better indication of what will happen once those wheats go into production. So the vetting process of us selecting a wheat that makes it to production to go out to the farmer is going to have a higher confidence once it hits your field. I don’t want to discount small plot replicated data, and University plots, I think they are good for looking at disease ratings and wheat characteristics in multiple locations, but when it comes to yield data there is too much variation and inconsistency. Our larger Strip Trial cleans up a lot of that variation, and gives us a lot better view of how a wheat will yield on a larger scale. We can have 10 wheats or 100 wheats out here, but only 3-5 wheats will make it to the top.

    Luckily, we did not have to deal with a large outbreak of Wheat Streak Mosaic Virus this year, largely due to the problem being fresh in everyone’s mind and holding back for a later planting date. For the most part we were forced into that late planting date with the big rains at the end of September and first part of October. However, planting dates played a big role in how things yielded. For our area, you could take the date of October 15th and anything planted past that date had a 10 to 20-bushel yield loss to it. Our 10th to 15th planted wheat was very good considering the lack of moisture we had from the time it went in the ground to harvest. It was a profile year and thankfully for most of western Kansas there was a good sub soil moisture profile for the wheat to live on. I don’t think we can always expect to have wheat running in the mid-60s on two inches of in-season rain without the profile we started with. As far as seeding rates go, the varieties we had planted before the 15th the lower populations were winning and running in the 60’s and 70’s. Once the planting date got later we saw a yield increase with every higher population. As far as the strip trial goes, it is disappointing to have a down year for yields, but it also helps to solidify the varieties we choose to plant and sell, with number one this year being drought tolerance equal to yield. The last couple of years we have seen the newer, high yielding varieties yield capability’s, and this year got to see how they handled a tougher year, to make sure they are a good choice for all situations. Our strip trial was planted the 17th of October which was not optimum this year, but even though its yields are lower than most of the production fields, as far as what varieties still come out on top holds true. It is great to see a lot of experimental and non-commercially released choices showing up just above what we believe to be the top varieties for western Kansas. Our top four dryland varieties for western Kansas are WB-Grainfield, Langin, Joe, and T158. Our top irrigated wheat’s, depending on the situation, are WB4269, WB-Cedar, and WB4303.



    WB-Grainfield

    This is an all-around good wheat. Good yields, plant health, tests weights, and protein. This is one of the wheat’s that did not like a planting date past the 15th of October and had a slightly off year; but planted toward the front end was a solid performer. Always remember to watch where you put this wheat as out of our top four it will probably struggle the most with wheat streak, but as we saw last year in our strip trial it will yield just fine through a mild infection. This wheat can be dropped at a lighter population in a good fertility program to go for very high yields, as this wheat is the best wheat out there for putting a lot of grain into the head. It will need a flag leaf fungicide application if stripe rust shows up big, but will get away with it with a very slight infection. The yield history on this variety is very tough to beat.


    WB-Cedar

    This is an early maturing variety with excellent straw, very high tillering, and yield. This is a wheat for full irrigation. It is a short wheat which makes it very well suited for irrigation. This is a good choice to follow corn taken for grain, especially late. It is moderately resistant to stripe rust, leaf rust, and is intermediate on tan spot. It had great test weight and protein for the year. This is a very forgiving wheat as it can help make up for some of the struggles associated with irrigated wheat. This has been our number 1 irrigated wheat.


    WB4269

    This is a new wheat performing very well in its first big year out. It is a lot like WB-Cedar, but has better stripe rust resistance, and improved Scab resistance. It also handled the heat stress we had toward the end very well and came in with the best test weight of the irrigated varieties. I would say following corn stalks it has the best get up and go and establishes a stand very fast. It may lean a little more than WB-Cedar but we did not have an issue with it lodging. I look for this wheat to take the place of WB-Cedar for western Kansas irrigated production


    WB4303

    If you want to shoot for the moon on irrigation, this is the wheat. We will have a very in-depth conversation about how to raise it, and it’s not for all producers.


    Joe

    Joe is a white wheat. It is a very well rounded wheat with excellent yield. It is a medium late maturing, medium tall wheat, with stripe rust resistance. This wheat is carrying the WSM2 gene which has resistance to wheat streak mosaic up to 70 degrees, so it is not 100%, but as good as it gets going up against mosaic. It is a top yielder, and with its maturity through the heat we had to finish in says a lot about how good this wheat is. It was up at the top of our farm again this year. If you can handle a white wheat this is a must have on the farm.


    Langin

    We replaced Tam 112 and Byrd with this wheat. We now have two years of history with it, and it has performed in every situation. It is going to be a big-dog yielder, and in the droughty years hangs in and produces more wheat than you thought it should have. It is a medium to medium early wheat with a medium long coleoptile. It may have a lodging issue if planted too thick, so watch your seeding rates with this variety. We have seen it yield all the way up to 100 bpa and stand just fine. Remember to fertilize for a high yield if going into the protein market because if it is a good wheat year it will probably out-yield your available nitrogen and struggle to have protein. It is also carrying some wheat curl mite resistance.


    T-158

    This wheat is definitely getting up there in age, but for it being a true early maturity, adult plant resistant to stipe rust, good tolerance to Wheat Streak, consistent yields and test weight in tough conditions, that is why this wheat has hung around. This wheat is not going to win any yield contest, but it will not fall apart on you either. It is still the best all-around wheat for its maturity class. I will also touch on the variety 14-89, which is a Limagrain experimental wheat meant to replace T158. It is a T158 cross, which performed very well in our strip trial. It looks to be everything T158 is with better straw strength, and higher yield potential. We did have a small amount of production from it, so if it is released this fall there will be a modest amount available.


    The wheats above are all varieties we believe will excel on your farm. We have other wheats that we tested; some made it, some did not. We will be putting 2 to 3 new wheats in the ground this fall that we are very excited about. We take the wheat varieties we sell very seriously and want to bring you the best the industry has to offer. Give us a call as we can provide you with a lot more information on how to manage each one of these wheats to provide you with the best harvest the weather will allow.

    2018 Strip Trial