Spread Your Risk With Multiple Wheat Varieties

By David Boehm

When you make your seed decisions for the next growing season, can you predict what the weather will be like in the upcoming summer?  In April and May when you plant, can you guess what the wheat market will pay a premium for or discount after harvest? The obvious answer to these questions is no. Every year, different challenges present themselves for both the growing environment and therefore, how you will be paid for your wheat crop.  Since you cannot outguess Mother Nature, the best way to produce a harvestable and marketable crop is to spread your risk with multiple wheat varieties.

Here are four key considerations in variety selection.

1. Maturity timing – Spreading out maturities will not only spread out harvest, but will help reduce scab infection with different flowering stages, and the timing of heat or frost damage.  In 2004, a long and cool season, later maturing varieties performed very well, opposite from hot and dry years where early varieties finish with less heat damage.  Normally, earlier maturity helps escape scab infection, but this was not the case in 2005 where winter wheat and early maturing spring wheat showed more scab, regardless of genetic scab tolerance.  We don’t know what the weather will offer, so spread out your crop maturity dates.
2. Yield and protein – Planting more varieties allows you to manage the balance between more yield potential versus higher protein potential.  Since many varieties come with one at a cost of the other, you can choose varieties with different potential. Some years, like 2004, protein premiums and discounts are very strong.  Other years you may not be paid for high protein, or in extreme cases, even discounted for it as in 2002.  You don’t know what will be of value when you plant. 
3. Disease Management – Tan spot, leaf rust, septoria, and bacterial stripe do not always occur at economic thresholds and at every environment, and different varieties have specific levels of tolerance.  A variety that held up to disease one year may not be as strong the next.  Having different varieties helps you manage that change.  Try to use varieties that offer better disease tolerance. Built-in tolerance is a better option than fungicides where timing and cost can be critical.
4. Scab management – Genetic tolerance and the timing of flowering have much to do with scab management.  If the moisture and temperatures are conducive at flowering, scab will be an issue.  Since you can’t control the environment, manage your scab risk by the varieties you select.  Include one variety with better tolerance and remember that the most scab-tolerant varieties are still not “resistant” and in years such as 2005, scab fungicides are still worth it.

We talk a lot about risk management in farming.  Since you have no control over the environment, get some control over your production risk by choosing multiple varieties. This is the same as growing multiple maturity levels in your corn or soybean production, or spreading the risk of your retirement plan with different investment funds.