Wheat Download

Now available as a free download: a "Winter Wheat Variety Selection Tool" from Ducks Unlimited

The variety or hybrid selection decision is one of the most important in successfully producing any crop. Today’s top producers search for information to make science-based and data-driven decisions. Agricultural universities, private seed companies, local crop and ag improvement associations, and others are working to produce the kind of data that can be used to drive that process.

Although crop producers have become quite good at identifying the characteristics they consider to be most important, the sheer volume of test plot data available (and necessary) to make an informed decision can be overwhelming, intimidating and not just a little bit unwieldy. To help simplify this process, the agronomists at Ducks Unlimited have compiled all of the data that they could get their hands on to develop a master database. Any data provided from any reliable source was included in the database. There is a "tool" which is an Excel spreadsheet that assigns relative ratings from 0-4 for each characteristic for each variety found in the database.

I talked with Duck’s Unlimited employee Renee about their download: the spreadsheet tool allows users to assign their own”weighting" (percentage of overall importance) to as many of the characteristics as they wish, and then to sort the varieties based on those weightings. Different tabs (worksheets) of the spreadsheet allow users to limit their selections based on yield results from sub-regions of the state, or to make evaluations on a broader scale (state-wide plus nearby trials in neighboring states). Users are encouraged to read the "Explanatory and Cautionary Notes" at the bottom of the spreadsheet for each region in order to get the full benefit of the tool.