Agronomist Notes

Harvest is quickly approaching and some of the first fields of canola are being swathed. I’d say canola swathing will kick into gear next week as will pre-harvest glyphosate in wheat and barley. Pea harvest has started with yields into the mid-50 bu/ac range and excellent quality.

I haven’t heard anyone price fertilizer yet but still lots of talk about urea at $580, phosphate at $780, potash at $650 and sulphur at $430. I suspect urea will take a small jump in price just from the carrying costs of retailers holding product.

This week we’ll look at all things pre-harvest to get the juices flowing, or not, actually. First we’ll look at some research on pre-harvest glyphosate timing and the effects on yield and residue levels. Next, I’ll talk about some good and taboo options for controlling volunteer RR canola in cereals.  We’ll look at how early to swath or pre-harvest wheat before grade or bushel weight loss. We’ll look at a few tips for straight cutting canola as well as my observations from straight cutting my own canola in the past. We’ll finish with fundamental and technical grain market news.

Seeded	May 1-7	May 8-15	May 16-21	May 22-29
Wheat	hard dough	medium dough	soft dough	milky dough
Canola	swathing	7 to swathing	10 to swathing	15 to swathing
Barley	hard dough	hard dough	medium dough	soft dough
Peas	finished	finished	late podding	late podding

• Begin staging if you plan to straight cut canola, watch fields as they come out of bloom to give you an idea of which fields are the most even and best candidates for straight cutting.
• Start watching for signs of prematurely ripened areas in wheat (take-all) and canola (sclerotinia)
• Take note of fields with wild oat escapes and plan a fall Avadex application or spring Prepare application.
• Check fields for late weeds flushes; they may be good candidates for pre-harvest glyphosate.

Pushing the envelope in pre-harvest glyphosate 

With the prospect of late maturing crops on our hands, many producers are wondering how early they can push the pre-harvest glyphosate window to speed up maturity. From experience, spending the money on a properly timed pre-harvest glyphosate application can mean the difference between No. 1 HRS and feed in a wet, humid fall. However, a poorly timed application can lead to either no dry down effect or excess glyphosate residue in the seed and yield loss. Let's take a good look at pre-harvest timing in wheat for dry down purposes.

Canadian research has shown that glyphosate applied to wheat with seed moisture content above 25% slightly improved the dry down of both the seed and foliage when compared to leaving a standing crop. The authors found that the small differences in the dry-down required 10 to 15 days to become expressed, and warmer or drier conditions tended to make the differences in dry-down between treated and untreated disappear.

The maximum benefit of glyphosate as a desiccant was observed when seed moisture content was above 40%. This was well before the wheat crop reached physiological maturity and, consequently, the authors reported yield losses and high residue levels of glyphosate in the harvested seed. When seed moisture content dropped below 40%, the glyphosate applications caused little or no yield losses and little to no differences in kernel weight, test weight, grain protein, or germination. Just to note, 40% seed moisture content is 10% higher than the registered label.

If you're planning a pre-harvest dry down application the biggest thing to observe is the amount of green leaf area remaining on the flag and penultimate leaf. If the top two leaves have died from disease or other related stresses then a pre-harvest glyphosate dry down application will not work and only leave you disappointed. You must have roughly 5 to 10% of the top two leaves with green leaf material adjacent to the stem. The glyphosate must translocate down to the roots to stop growth. If there is dead tissue between the stem and green leaf area, the glyphosate has nowhere to go but accumulate in the leaf and do nothing to stop growth. If this is the case then swathing will be your next best choice. Good luck out there. SL

Source: www.smallgrains.org

Controlling volunteer RR canola in cereals

Some producers are facing late flushing volunteer Roundup Ready canola in wheat and barley this year. Late June rains and a weak plant stand from excessive rain has left room for volunteer canola to germinate and pop through the canopy. There are a few fields with RR canola volunteers just coming into bloom. The trouble is what to do with Roundup Ready canola in ripening wheat and barley.

There are no registered herbicides available on the market although a few options have been tried. One option is to apply a 20 g/ac rate of Heat with 1 L/ac of glyphosate. I’ve been told this is effective but the pre-harvest interval is 60 days and there is no way I could professionally recommend this option. I would hope they’re applying it to feed wheat or feed barley for their own animals and not on hard red spring wheat. The second and most obvious option is to swath your cereals to help dry it down. That would be the safest and most reasonable way of controlling RR canola in your cereals. SL

How early can I swath or apply pre-harvest glyphosate without effecting yield or quality?

There has been a big push towards spraying pre-harvest glyphosate earlier than “normal” in wheat the last two years to speed up dry-down. The registered timing for pre-harvest glyphosate is 30% seed moisture content. Trying to identify 30% seed moisture content in a standing wheat crop is a tall order when you don’t have a visual reference to draw from. Let me change that for you with the photos below.

Producers may shy away from swathing early to avoid leaving grain on the ground for so long, but also because they don’t know how early they can push it without losing yield. Everyone seems to recall the time where they swathed wheat grass green and came away with ruby red, beautiful wheat. The reason they got away with it was because hard red spring wheat can be swathed up to 45% seed moisture content and still make a No.1 grade with good bushel weight. So, to help you identify 45% seed moisture content (mid-dough stage where it can be easily crushed between finger and thumb) take a look at the photos below.

If the weather forecast looks good, perhaps you can start knocking down wheat a little earlier than you would normally. If you have a sprout tolerant variety like AC Harvest then I wouldn't be afraid to swath it early knowing it will lay on the ground for a while and not lose a grade. If you're still two to three weeks away from harvest then swathing early might be the best option. I hope these pictures help you like they did me! I took these samples and pictures with a Simple Sampler portable combine and a hand held Dickey John moisture tester. Both were well worth the price tag. SL

Pre-harvest dry down strategies in feed barley

Adequate soil moisture and cool night time temperatures have some barley crops taking their sweet time to mature. It's August 22nd and we’re getting a bit antsy to get harvest started; we’ve got a lot of crop to take off again this year. The added pressure to speed up crop maturity has producers wondering how early they can spray glyphosate in their barley without hurting yield. With no information readily available in Western Canada, I turned to my friend and fellow crop consultant Andrew Newall from Victoria, Australia. Andrew shared some of the glyphosate application timings they use in a strategy called crop topping, a practice used for weed control and crop dry down.

First, crop topping cereals is mainly used to control and reduce a nasty weed called annual ryegrass as well as even out crop maturity. In Australia, only wheat is registered for pre-harvest glyphosate applications and barley will not be accepted for malt if sprayed with glyphosate. The registered application timing for pre-harvest glyphosate is 32% seed moisture content, however Andrew has found they can apply glyphosate much earlier without affecting yield or grain quality, including germination.

The application timing for crop topping barley is around the soft to medium dough stage, which would be roughly 50% seed moisture content. He also takes into account variety and climactic conditions. For example, short season varieties can be crop topped earlier than long season as they mature quicker. If the season is warming up fast and maturity is happening quickly, then timing can be earlier.

The accompanying photos show when crop topping occurs. It may be shocking to see how green the barley is, but really, our barley would be the same at the soft dough stage. If we can push pre-harvest timing in feed barley to the soft dough stage, it would really spread out the harvest window or give us another option when maturity is delayed on a year like this. Time will tell and I look forward to experimenting on this side of the pond.

I must caution producers that spraying glyphosate anytime before 30% seed moisture content in wheat or barley is completely off label and places the liability in your hands should things not work out as you hoped.SL

Photos courtesy of NewAg Consulting, Victoria, Australia 

To straight cut or swath canola, that is the question

You may be thinking of straight cutting your canola if it’s maturing nice and evenly into late August. It’s always a debate whether to swath or straight cut canola and/or to decide how much to leave standing. Here's a checklist I've adapted from the Canola Council of Canada to help you make the decision to straight cut canola:

Time of year - You should be making the decision whether to swath or straight cut within the first two weeks of August. If the crop maturity has you asking this question in the last two weeks of August, the risk of the crop maturing under cooler August-September weather may be too high. Cooler nights and shorter days can really slow down crop maturity and push your harvest window out to mid-October or later.

Crop canopy - The crop should be well knitted and slightly lodged to reduce the chance of pod shelling and pod drop. Remember that pod integrity can be affected by frost, drought and weathering caused by dry/wet conditions.

Uniform maturity - The crop should be relatively uniform to ensure over-ripe areas do not weather and shell before the rest of the crop is ready to harvest.

Disease - The crop should be relatively free from diseases including blackleg, fusarium wilt, sclerotinia and alternaria. These diseases can cause premature ripening, which can in turn cause pod shattering.

Hail - Crops affected by hail are poor candidates for straight cutting due to the probability of greater disease infection through damaged tissue and reduced pod integrity from physical damage. Also, any late season hail often causes greater levels of damage to standing crops than swathed crops.

Number of acres - Straight combining can be a finicky process because the canola stems and pods can still be green and tough even though the grain is dry. This can slow down harvest efficiencies significantly. If you have a large number of acres to cover, and you seeded those acres in a short time span, I would suggest allocating only a portion to straight cutting. SL

To learn more about straight combining, go to the Canola Council of Canada http://www.canolacouncil.org/news/1804/straight_cut_or_swath_know_your_fields.aspx

Steve’s top 5 lessons on straight cutting canola

We straight cut canola last year in one of the coldest, wettest harvests on record. Translated: we learned A LOT about what you should and shouldn’t do. Here are the top five things to think about when deciding to straight cut canola:

Canola gets tougher sooner in the evenings compared to swathed canola. The evening dew covers all the pods in a straight cut field versus just the top of the swath.
Canola is drier sooner in the morning when leaving it to straight cut because the air flow dries it out the canopy faster versus a swath. 
Dry down the canola with a pre-harvest glyphosate at the same time you would start to swath. 30% seed colour change on the bottom third of the main stem. If it’s RR canola then you’re out of luck with pre-harvest herbicide options.
Auger style headers work better than draper headers. Augers tend to even the crop out before it hits the feeder house. Also, the fingers at the centre of the auger help pull the crop into the feeder house. If you have a draper header, buy a cross auger kit to help direct canola into the feeder house. Draper headers without cross augers allow canola to bunch up near the feeder house until it gets big enough to get pulled in and then whamo! Plugged.
Beware of the green chaff from stems and pods that collect on the sides of the bin when filling. The canola may be dry but the chaff may not be and could be the cause of heating. Pull a few loads as usual to help avoid this problem. SL