August 14, 2012

Agronomists Notes

Hello Reader,

The 2012 harvest is just gearing up with the first of the peas coming off, some malt barley swathing and early wheat being preharvested. Pea yields have been in the mid-40 bu/ac range up to mid-60’s with some hail damage. I suspect the first of the barley and wheat will come off in the next 7 days so I’ll keep you posted.

This issue of Beyond Agronomy News begins with a video on the proper stage for pre-harvest glyphosate and then at how early you can swath or apply pre-harvest glyphosate. We’ll look at preharvest dry down strategies in barley and at some quick tips on straight cutting canola. We’ll finish with technical grain market news.

Have a great week.

Crop Staging

(Calgary to Drumheller to Three Hills)

Seeded    Apr 24-30               May 1-7                  May 8-15
Wheat      hard dough           medium dough        soft dough
Canola     5% seed change   late pod                   late pod
Barley      mature                   hard dough             medium dough
Peas        mature                   hard dough             medium dough

Steve's tips and tricks for the week

Follow me on Twitter for in-season updates @BeyondAgronomy

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 or blackleg).
Take note of fields with wild oat escapes and plan a fall Avadex, Rival or Edge application.
Check fields for late weeds flushes; they may be good candidates for pre-harvest glyphosate.

Perfect timing for pre-harvest glyphosate

To help take the guess work out of staging for pre-harvest glyphosate, click here for a video by yours truly explaining what to look for.

How early can I swath or apply pre-harvest glyphosate in wheat?

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 a few visuals below.

Producers may shy away from swathing early to avoid leaving grain on the ground for longer than necessary, but also because they don't know how early they can swath push it it. There have been many stories about swathing grass green wheat and coming away with ruby red, beautiful seed. The reason they got away with it was because hard red spring wheat can be swathed at 45% seed moisture content and still make a No.1 grade with no bushel weight loss. So, to help identify 45% seed moisture content (mid-dough stage where it can be easily crushed between finger and thumb) take a look at the photos to the right.

If the weather forecast looks good, perhaps you could 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. SL

Pushing the envelope with pre-harvest glyphosate

With the potential to harvest some wheat in August, 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 in some cases yield loss from shrunken kernels. 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 dry down strategy 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 suggests.

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: smallgrains.org

Pre-harvest dry down strategies in feed barley

Adequate soil moisture and high humidity levels this August will have some barley crops taking their sweet time to mature. It's August 14th 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 research 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 30% 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 barley is completely off label with no research done in Western Canada. I encourage you to take note of seed moisture content and perhaps do some trials of your own this fall. SL

Photos courtesy of NewAg Consulting, Victoria, Australia

Tips for straight cutting canola

This year is shaping up to be a great year for many to try straight cutting canola. Mitch and I have straight cut canola for the last three years and feel it's a great option. For many, it's always a debate whether to swath or straight cut and/or to decide how much to leave standing. If you want to try straight cutting canola, I've put a short checklist adapted from the Canola Council of Canada to help you make the decision:

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

Pictured above: Straight cutting canola near Carbon, AB 2011.

Steve's top 5 lessons on straight cutting canola

We’ve straight cut canola the last three years with one being the coldest, wettest harvests on record. Translation: 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