Research on facultative spring wheat

Farm and Ranch Research is being conducted at Washington State University by spring wheat breeder Michael Pumphrey on facultative seeding of spring wheat. That is basically planting spring wheat in late fall. Some growers are fall planting dark northern spring wheat from which they are seeing benefits compared to spring planting. Then there is the case of winter kill in soft white winter where soft white spring is inter-planted.

Pumphrey: “The kind of studies we are doing, just initially to get a baseline of what kind of genetic variation we have. We are taking existing varieties and elite lines and planting them in replicated trials under those conditions so we can understand how those lines perform. There is no reason to believe that the way a line performs when you plant it in the spring is going to be the same as when you are taking it out of context and planting it at a different time. And it allows us to look for things like improved cold tolerance even in spring wheats. There is significant variation. We see variation in response to day length that can be important in that type of cropping system.”

Pumphrey says winter kill is not necessarily the primary issue for fall planted spring wheat;

Pumphrey: “You are probably looking at frost concerns later in the spring. Because when your seeding it in that late in the fall it is not going to grow and be exposed to the coldest of the cold temperatures in the winter time but if we have late frosts in March or April, and the crop has developed faster than a winter wheat crop would, then you can have some frost injury as well.”

Pumphrey and his colleagues began getting some of the baseline data from plots this year.

I’m Bob Hoff and that’s the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on Northwest Aginfo Net.