Off Station Winter Wheat Cultivar Performance on Fallow in Central Montana (2009)

Abstract

This report evaluates the performance of winter wheat on fallow in central Montana and provides unbiased information on improved cereal cultivars for producers to use in the selection of best suited cereal grain varieties for central Montana and other areas with similar crop environments. The 2009 crop year experienced harsh, dry, cold, and windy weather during the winter and spring causing stand survival problems and inhibited the growth of both winter and spring cereals. “continuous crop” systems. Fortuitous cool summer night temperatures resulted in reduced evaporative demands allowing good cereal growth later into the summer. Some of the north Denton through Winifred areas received good summer precipitation. However, the summer precipitation was not as beneficial to yields as it would have been if received earlier in the growing season. The relative agronomic performance among winter wheat cultivars is for both crop fallow systems and no-till continuous crop systems. Therefore, whether the data is generated from a crop fallow system or a continuous crop system, the varieties the producer chooses to grow would probably the same. The results show that even the cultivars that have the high multi-year averages can have off-years for a variety of reasons. Yellowstone has demonstrated that it is a worthy yield standard and suitable check for other characters such as test weight, protein content and plant height. Historically, the central Montana trial locations have not provided a good assessment in the presence of significant sawfly cutting. In 2008 and 2009, there were some opportunities for some assessment of performance in the presence of sawfly.