Winter Wheat Seed in Short Supply This Fall?

By Blake Vander Vorst, Regional Agronomist,
Ducks Unlimited

Winter wheat seed could be in short supply this fall.  I am receiving calls and comments from WW growers who are telling me a lot of neighbors will be planting winter wheat for the first time, or for the first time in some years, and most of the current growers are telling me their acreage will increase as well. 

The yield and price have been really good this summer. Yields were a little less than expected in the east, but still an excellent crop in the 50 to 80+ bu/ac range. I had a chance to ride with a Steele, N.D. grower during harvest and the yield monitor ranged from the upper 50s in the low areas to 110 on the hilltops. It looked like a field average in the mid-to-upper 80s. 

Fungicide paid really big dividends this year all across the area with the leaf rust pressure. Kent McKay, NDSU North Central Station, recently sent me the yield data from the Roseglen WW variety trial that included fungicide treated and untreated treatments.  The average yield for the 10 WW varieties for fungicide treated = 60.4 bu/ac to untreated 43.8 bu/ac.  That’s a 16.1 bu. difference with a variety range of 7.7 to 23.3 bu/ac increase for fungicide treatment. More fungicide treatment analysis will be available as the data comes in.

We have 2007 N.D. and S.D. Winter Wheat Seed Growers Directories posted on our web site,  www.ducks.org/agronomy.  On the web site, we also have links to NDSU and SDSU 2007 Trial Results as well as a link for NDSU data which includes many of the DU trials or sponsored trials with and without fungicide.