Where Winter Wheat Works
This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist with Nebraska Extension for Dodge and Washington counties. Are you looking to improve soil quality and health, plant cover crops, reduce soil erosion, find a place to haul manure, fight winter annual weeds, diversify of your crop rotation, and spread out workload through the year. Then try growing winter wheat and join several other farmers in the area that already are.
Selecting the best winter wheat variety for our environment is just as important as it is for corn and soybeans. Yield, grain quality, lodging resistance, and disease resistance are very important variety traits to consider when growing winter wheat. The University of Nebraska conducts winter wheat variety testing each year in Saunders County near Mead. This is just one of 15 winter wheat variety trials across Nebraska each year. Commercially available wheat varieties and experimental lines are evaluated for local performance in these trials. I looked at the 28 varieties being tested near Mead earlier this week to evaluate stripe and leaf rust resistances. Over the last three years, SY Wolf from Syngenta Agripro, WB Cedar from Westbred, and Freeman from Husker Genetics have been the top yielding varieties in local trials.
Under good management, winter wheat does yield very well here and the local basis for winter wheat in Fremont is very good compared to other locations in Nebraska. Scoular Grain and ADM both purchase winter wheat here in Fremont. For more information on growing winter wheat in Dodge and Washington counties, I have put together a short 1-page guide that you can find online at our local website at croptechcafe.org.
For more information on winter wheat production, call me at 727-2775 or visit our local website at croptechcafe.org. Know your crop, know your tech, know your bottom line. This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist for Nebraska Extension on KTIC radio.
More resources below in the short guide:
