As farmers look to nail down their winter wheat seed purchase in the next couple of months, they’ll also need to determine if and what seed treatments should be included.
Depending on their geographic location, growers will battle a number of pests. In the northern climates of Minnesota, North Dakota and parts of South Dakota and Montana, those include wireworms, Fusarium, Phythium, Rhizoctonia and bunts and smuts, according to Josh Kelley, Cereals and DFC product lead Syngenta Seedcare, North America. Whereas, in the southern climate of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, growers face aphids, Hessian fly and bunts and smuts.
With wheat prices and the value of seed, some question whether the expense of a seed treatment pays off. Andrew Friskop, North Dakota State University Extension plant pathologist has studied wheat yields and their relationship with fungicide seed treatments since he joined the university in 2013.
Join us tomorrow, July 24, for a webinar as Kelley spotlights the pests growers need to be most concerned about and Friskop shares the results of more than 10 years of research looking at seed treatments, stand counts and yield.
Registrations are now closed.
Did You Know?
All-wheat production in 2018 is up 8 percent (nearly 141 million bushels) from 2017, according to the July Crop Production reports from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (USDA-NASS). While winter wheat production was raised only slightly to 1,881 million bushels from the June projection, other spring wheat production is up 32 percent from 2017/18 based on a 27 percent increase in projected harvest area and expected record-high yields.
