- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat & Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(bright uplifting music) - You're watching "Montana Ag Live," originating today from the studios of KUSM on a very exciting campus in Montana State University, and coming to you over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, a retired professor of Plant Pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening in an interesting program.

We're gonna look a lot at our agricultural industry, especially our grain industry tonight.

We'll also entertain some questions about livestock, 'cause we have a livestock guy here, too.

If you have any livestock questions, I like to put 'em on the spot because he wasn't expecting that.

So we'll get to that this evening, but this program is not very much fun unless you provide the questions.

And the tougher the questions, the better, because we do like to challenge the panel.

So if you have any questions or curious about anything agriculturally, phone it in tonight.

The number will be on the screen shortly, and we can go from there and see if they can answer those questions.

Answering them tonight, way to my left is Darrin Boss.

Darrin is superintendent at the Northern Ag Research Center up at Havre.

He's also associate director of the Ag Experiment Station here.

He probably has some more titles, too, but I'm not gonna get that deep into 'em.

Our guests tonight, and I've asked Doug Holen to be on many times.

He is always so busy, I can never catch him, but I got him this year.

And Doug is the manager of our Foundation Seed Program here at MSU.

And I will say this, I've been around this state for 40 some years.

There is no better seed producers than we have here at Montana State University.

And Doug is one of the reasons, and we'll get into that as we go along.

We borrowed somebody from the Department of Ag tonight, Frank Etzler.

Frank is an entomologist.

He's MSU trained by the way, but he is an entomologist in Montana Department of Agriculture.

We haven't had a lot of entomologists on, so if you have bug questions, and we had some emails that we'll get to that concern bugs or bug-like creatures.

So we'll get that tonight.

And of course, Abi Saeed.

Abi is our horticulturalist, answers all kinds of different questions.

So don't be bashful, get those questions in tonight.

And answering the phone, Judge Bruce Loble and Cadee Hess.

So get those phones busy.

Doug, glad to have you.

Tell us a little bit about what you do for MSU.

- Thanks, and I'm happy to be here, Jack.

It has been a little time coming, but So the Foundation Seed Program at MSU is one that was started back in the 1930s, and there's been, I think I am the sixth now, Foundation Seed director at MSU.

So it's a very good job.

But what it is, it's the middle ground between the five breeding programs here at MSU and the producers of Montana.

It's a great place, where you get to take the academic discovery from the breeding programs, bring that information to producers, get the information from producers, what they need for genetics and what their problems are and what they need in a variety, and bring that back to the breeders.

- Let's enlighten the audience.

What is the foundation seed?

What constitutes foundation seed?

- There's an overseeing agency.

AOSCA is its acronym, and that's a U.S.

status seeds standard that it has to fall into.

And then locally for Montana, Heather Unverzagt runs the Montana Seed So to get foundation seed, you first get the breeder seed from, that's the originating seed from the variety that's been released.

There's only a small amount of that.

You get the foundation, that breeder seed, grow it.

And then if you pass field inspection and then grain inspection, then you have foundation seed.

There's a lot of nuances that go into that in terms of purity, germination, disease screening.

And then that foundation seed goes out to the seed producers of Montana, and then they're gonna produce registered and then the certified, which is the most common seed that producers are using.

- Okay, we'll get to more of that as we go along tonight.

But we had a bunch of email questions last week and I have a list of them right here.

And I promised, emailed all the people that sent in these emails that we get to 'em tonight.

And the first one comes from the Whitehall area, a person named Jamie.

They want to know when we should plant triticale, and is it too late this year?

First of all, what is triticale?

- Triticale is a small green species that's a cross between rye and wheat.

So it's kind of a man-made grain and very good.

And I'm assuming they mean winter triticale, 'cause there'd be the winter version in the spring.

And so I know in the Midwest use a lot for poultry.

It's got some human consumption uses as well, but it's a another small grain.

So ideally, and what they want to do when you're looking at planting dates, of course, the date matters, but also if there's moisture in the ground, 'cause you gotta have that to get started.

September 15th, 17th is ideal, and the reason they say that is it allows two to four leaf growth before that first killing frost.

And remember, for anything, even horticulture-wise, it's the crown that has to survive the winter.

And that puts that plant in the best position to survive.

- Okay, winter trip's been amazing for some annual forages also, too, Jack, so they could be growing it for that also.

- All right, so I have a question, who's improving triticale varieties?

I don't know of a triticale breeder that exists, does anybody?

- Yeah, there's private industry that certainly has 'em.

I think here locally in Montana, Nutrien has some germplasm there.

MonTECH has some varieties that they are doing, but MSU has released a couple as well.

They've been released privately, but the most recent one would be FX 1001 is an MSU variety, but being sold across the Montana and other states by a private industry.

- So I'm still learning, you know, I have retired for a lot of years, but the advantage of triticale over forage winter wheat, is there an advantage to triticale for forage crop?

- I'll speak agronomically then, Darrin can speak certainly to the feeding part of it.

But triticales, oftentimes, will have more biomass.

So you're getting more tonnage for that, but also has an extra, I would say, step of winter hardiness for overwintering.

- Okay.

- Depending on when you're cutting it, Jack, most of the time, we can generate really high quality feed for these annual forages.

The more we let it mature, the more fiber's gonna come out.

And you know, of course, in fact the impacts, but some agronomists are telling me they're seeing that the forage triticale grow a little taller, a little more stemy, but it's not like they're impacting intakes.

And the the winter forages like rye or some of these others are more of a shorter, very much tilled than some of the triticales.

So different spots for different things.

- So I learned something.

It took me a lot of years to figure that out.

Another question from Waterloo, and I don't think we've had many questions from Waterloo, and most people probably don't know where it's at.

- Yeah.

- But it's halfway between twin bridges and Whitehall on the east side of the highway.

- Yep.

- Donna, I think it's right on the Jefferson.

But anyway, this person has seen a lot of spiders this year and they actually have what they believe is a banded garden spider.

Is it poisonous and does it cause any problems?

And I think we have a photo that she sent in or he sent in.

So if we'd have that spider photo up, you guys can jump on it.

- Yeah, so I would say, I'm gonna be a little nitpicky here, poisonous versus venomous.

So if you eat something, that's poisonous.

If it bites you, that's venomous.

So spiders would have venom.

But all spiders have venom, but this one have a very strong venom and they're fairly non-aggressive compared So as long as you're not going there trying to take its food, as you see in the picture, away from its nest, it'll leave you alone.

But as why you see a lot right now, they have a peak activity, banded garden snails in September.

They are native to North America.

And I would say because we haven't had that first freezing frost yet this year, we've had that population allow to survive.

So it's been a very mild fall.

- It's been a beautiful fall.

- Yes.

- Although, looking at the long range forecast next Sunday and Monday, a possibility of some white stuff, which we used to get that in September.

Not anymore.

Abi, this question came in a couple times and we haven't got to it yet.

Why are there so many cones at the top of spruce trees this year?

- That's a good question, and that's something a lot of us have been noticing throughout the state.

We've been noticing this even beyond Montana.

There's just a huge crop of cones on top of a lot of our evergreens, but it's really noticeable on the spruces.

And when this happens, we call that a mast year.

And the reason why this happens is kind of not completely understood.

So some people think that it could be for the trees to kind of try and overcome kind of pest issues, disease issues, if they're stressed, they might produce kind of a larger than normal crop of cones.

Or it could be to try and prevent like herbivores from eating too much of their seeds.

So basically, to keep any of their pest guessing and or try and get through after a tough year.

So when we see that, it can just be like an interesting phenomena But sometimes, when we see the load be so heavy on those trees, we've seen some of them break some of these branches that are really overloaded, too.

- Well, I tell you what, you mow under those trees right now and they fall pine cold fly all over the place.

Question from Rudyard and we don't get a lot of calls from Rudyard.

And I'm gonna throw this one to Doug.

What's wrong with just using bin-run seed to re-seed winter wheat?

- Okay, so the question bin-run seed, we'd call that an industry common seed.

And with Montana state varieties, you can do that.

We can talk later maybe on PVP's Title 5s, and how we license our varieties.

But all MSU varieties are publicly released first.

Some of them go privately, but then you can reuse that seed.

So what's wrong with that is, over time, there's a belief that genetics wear out over time.

And that really isn't true.

Once you have a variety and it's genetically stable over time, as long as it's always kept pure.

Bin-run seed, over time, can have other things introduced to it.

You know, think of contamination from planters, trucks, combines, any of those things, augers.

All of a sudden, that variety becomes multiple varieties.

Or it could have weed seed in it if there's some thistle or some goat grass, things like that.

And so really as long as it's being conditioned and it's being treated correctly, there's nothing wrong with it.

But there can be some real scares if not used correctly.

And in fact, we've gotten questions, where they thought it was winter wheat, but in fact, it was spring wheat.

- Spring wheat.

- We've had that once a year.

- Yeah, no, that's not all that uncommon.

But what you said reminds me of a variety, it's an older variety here.

It was called bronze chief.

And when that was released, I believe it was a Wally Johnson variety, if I'm not mistaken, way back when.

But the bronze chief that you still see growing now is far from the pure bronze chief that we used to have.

And that's because of contamination along the years and so forth.

So it's not quite as pure as certified seed.

How much more expensive is certified seed than, say, bin-run or common seed?

- It'll run with the market.

- Okay.

- And so an example is if we have someone who is growing seed for us, and the market says that that winter wheat is worth $6 and they're raising foundation seed and we've got a contract, and you know, commonly it might be $2 more that they're producing that.

But when they sell it, it's what the market will allow.

And of course, when market's like they are right now, you'll see a lot more bin-run seed grown last year, this year, and next year, because of market prices.

- On that note, I had a caller from Bigfork say they paid more for a loaf of bread than they're getting for bushel of wheat right now.

- That wouldn't be wrong.

- No, that's incredible.

- Wow.

- And the other caller from Bigfork has huge lilacs, and they noticed some dead wood that needs to be cleared.

Is now a good time to do that?

- Yeah, so for dead, diseased, and damaged tissue in plants, you can remove those at any time.

And it's a good idea to remove them when you find it because if you prune them out, you're making a nice clean cut.

But if they break off, they can tear a part of the bark and they can cause more damage.

So yes, it's a good time to clean out any dead wood.

General pruning of lilac, you should wait until after they bloom within the two-week period after they're done blooming in the spring.

- Okay, caller wants to know, is there such a thing as gluten-free wheat?

- I'm trying to think.

No, you'd have to go to oats.

You'd have to go to oats.

- I think it's called corn.

- Yeah, it'd be a different crop.

And so no, that has not been invented yet.

- I don't think it would ever be invented.

- I don't think so either.

- Not with those chromosomes and males genetics.

- No, if you can get gluten-free oats, and chickpea flour, I believe, is gluten-free.

- Yep.

- Few others, Rice flour, I think, is gluten-free.

- Yes.

- But if you're celiac or gluten intolerant, you don't want to be using wheat.

- And don't quote me on this, but I think if you go back to some of the ancient grains.

You can get some gluten-free as well with the eye in corn, emmer, spelts, along those areas.

- So on the ancient grains, this is a new grain.

This caller from, let me see where it's from, doesn't say, it's from a Paul.

And he wants to know is MSU doing any research with kernza, a type of wheatgrass that can be used for baking and then brewing?

I didn't know you could use it for brewing.

- Well, I can take a little bit about that, Jack.

Northwestern Ag Research Center brought some in intermediate wheatgrass is what it's commonly referred to, or a perennial wheatgrass.

It can be used both as a dual purpose.

You can cut it as a forage early on in its generations, then it's second or third year when you develop that crop, you can start cutting it for grain.

I see a lot of organic people, some in the high line that are actually selling this to shoots brewery, and using it to brew cattle.

So it's a perennial wheatgrass that you don't have to plant every year, can use it as forage and a wheat.

So if you want more information on it, look up at Northwestern Ag Research Center.

They have some yield data and some of that, just remember that it's a pretty mild environment for Montana versus somewhere on the high line and some of that where they're struggling, maybe it doesn't grow quite as well.

But I do know in Havre, it's growing 'cause I have fields next to our station.

- So there are some products on the market.

- Yep.

- I didn't realize that.

- Yep, being contracted.

- Well, initially, wasn't that developed in the Midwest Kansas or some place?

- Yeah, I wanna say Minnesota.

- In Minnesota?

- It's where the first ones that used it for that.

That's what I heard, too.

- Have you got any on the research farm?

- No, we do not.

I know there's been talk of it.

There may have been, I know there's not.

I don't think there is any now.

- Okay, thank you.

Another email question from last week, and this comes from a Mark.

They're planning to move over the winter and they would like to take some of their plants along.

I need to dig them before the ground freezes.

You better hurry, and hold them until the ground thaws in the spring.

How would they do that?

- There are a couple ways to do that, but my favorite way is to basically dig holes if you can and just plant the containers into the ground, because that's gonna really help insulate the root system in that container.

They're gonna be really exposed, so you can have a lot more root damage.

But if you just dig up some holes and you put them in the ground just in those containers, you can replant in the spring.

You can also put them in a protected location, like a shed or an unheated garage, to have them survive that winter, too.

But that can take up a lot of space.

- Can you mount it up with dirt or mount it up with like wood chips or something, Abi, instead of having to dig a hole?

- Yeah, you can do that, but it's not gonna be as insulated as if you were to put it in the ground.

So if we have kind of some of our minus 30, minus 40-degree temperatures, I don't know if that's gonna cut it.

Root systems for our trees and shrubs are much more sensitive than the above ground parts.

So when temperatures get to even like, you know, 20 degrees, 15 degrees, that can kill them.

So I would be a little concerned if we get extreme temperatures.

- Perfect, thank you.

- You know, the phones are quiet, folks.

You can get the questions in and I'll get to 'em tonight because I have some left over.

But if you have some current concerns, phone 'em in and we'll sure try to get to 'em tonight.

Here's an interesting one for Frank.

This person from Bozeman says, why are there no millers this year?

And I would agree, I've only seen a couple.

Most of the time in the fall, they're all over the place, but they're not here this year.

Any thought why?

- There's a few things that could possibly be at play here.

So one, we have a larger grizzly bear population, so they could be feasting on those cutworms when they're up there in the moths, up in the mountain meadows.

And then also, we've had a lot of moisture recently in August relative to other years.

So up in the higher elevations that brings some snow, and that will knock down that population, 'cause they will migrate away from those high elevations down.

So that snow could have just knocked that population.

- So they're basically an army cutworm, but there's several different kinds of.

- [Frank] Yes.

- And I've been told it's a big protein source for grizzly bears.

- It is a major protein source for grizzly bears.

- How do they congregate in pods or whatever you want to call it, flocks?

- I don't know the details about how they congregate.

It's outside my specialty.

- I know that, that's why I like to ask it.

- Yeah, but I can't tell you the details how they congregate, but I would say that the bears are kind of just using as a buffet style.

So they'll sit there and kind of scoop the moths up and just chow down.

- There's an interesting project that's going on in Montana State that was several years ago, where they actually tracked those army cutworms down from the fields and up, and how it impacted the grizzly bears and as they're rolling over rocks and eating those.

I can't remember how much it is, but look at Montana State University.

It's a really neat research project that they had worked on.

- Yeah, I believe like it came out of Bob Peterson's lab.

- He was one of the participants, that's right.

- Yeah, so I think Bob Peterson's lab, one of his grad students did some genetic work on that.

- Yeah, interesting.

I've always found it fascinating that a big grizzly bear could survive on little tiny balls.

So okay, a question from Belgrade, I'll throw this to Darrin.

This person would like to know a little bit more about when Appreciate Ag Week is and how do they become involved?

- Well, that's a great thing.

I'll tell you, a couple years ago, we've always had Celebrate Ag with the College of Agriculture.

We had a recent MSU student come back to one of our advisory councils with his father, and said, "You know, I love Celebrate Ag.

It's the second best week of Montana here on Montana State campus, 'cause I'm an Aggie."

And he said, "But you would never know it was Ag on campus."

Well, we said, "What do you mean?"

He says, "Well, we have the tailgate, we have the football game.

We really wouldn't know is Ag.

How do we make it bigger and better," right?

So November 2nd through November 8th is all Celebrate Ag Weeks.

We've turned this into an entire week of celebrating Ag production and throughout the week.

So we'll have Montana Ag Business Association, vice president of research is gonna have an innovation campus or an innovation conference.

We're gonna have a great big large tailgate on Saturday right before the game, which we sponsored the football game that day.

So all the commodity groups, all the people, it's like old homecoming for all the Aggies.

It's a great day and we celebrate it.

We put equipment all over campus.

And you'd be surprised how many students are going by, taking selfies with these great big tractors or the combines up there that we're looking at.

And so we've made it into a true celebration.

So November 2nd through November 8th, love to have anybody come, just come on by, and check out to be on the website soon.

- Actually, we're starting on the second on "Montana Ag Live" here to have Jillian Street, who is a new department of Ag director in Helena.

She'll be our guest that evening and she'll talk a lot about Celebrate Ag Week and how the Department of Ag and Montana State University agricultural group is interacting.

So catch that program, that's November 2nd.

- November 2nd.

- Yep.

Okay.

Where's Polaris, Montana?

Nobody knows, I don't either.

- I wanna say it's over in the Flathead.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Polaris.

- Polaris?

- Yep.

- Okay.

So we've never had a question from Polaris.

We have this evening.

This caller has removed cottonwood trees, but is noticing suckers are coming up.

How does she get rid of the suckers?

- So if you want to get rid of the entire tree and the root system itself, if you've gotten rid of kind of the main tree, you can use some stump killing herbicides.

There are specific ones.

They're often a higher concentration of the active ingredients.

So you can get like a higher concentration of glyphosate for example.

And if you drill holes kind of into the stump, you can apply that active ingredient and it's gonna be taken up into the root system.

So this is the time of year these trees are moving their sugars into that root system.

You can use that to your advantage and get those herbicides to be pulled in and that can kill the tree.

You can also mow suckers.

If you get them young enough, you can continue to mow them, and eventually, that tree will deplete itself of energy, and won't be able to continue anymore.

But if you wanna speed that up, you can use those stump killing herbicides.

- Okay, thank you.

A question from me to Doug.

I've always been curious and I've never had enough gumption to ask.

If a breeder decides that one of their crosses to develop a variety is a good line to eventually be released, so they start with just a few crosses.

How long does it take, time-wise, to go from when you first cross it to get enough seed, to get breeder seed, to foundation, how many years are involved?

- Great question.

Traditional breeding, where you're just taking that male and female parts and making the offspring from that, it's gonna be eight to 12 years.

And you can hurry that along with, you know, using Arizona or New Zealand as a wintering site.

There's a lot of modern technology now in which you can speed that up and, but no, eight to 12 years is what it's gonna take.

And of course, when they make that cross, they're taking two parents that have something that they want in that end result.

And then it's just advancing those generations from year to year.

You're going with, you know, maybe eight kernels to start with from that cross in the greenhouse, maybe in the field.

And then you're just increasing that, you know, to single plants out in the field and then to a line row, then to maybe a head row, where it's like multiple plot or multiple lines or rows.

And then you get into actual plots.

And then what they'll do is when they get it and they like what it's done and we've got many years of research and many environments, then they'll have that in a larger strip.

And that would be called the breeder strip.

That's the variety that's closest to being released.

And that's when they harvest that or actually foundation seed will harvest that, that is what you have to buy.

MSU policy have at least 20 bushel of a small grain in order to release it.

So we have enough to get out to the producers, 'cause they, you know, if something's new, that's when the most buzz is about it.

Now when you get to pulses, keep in mind they're much bigger, they're not returning as much seed.

And so we need at least 60 bushel of that to get started with a variety increase.

- That's pretty amazing when you think about it.

And our predominant variety, what is our predominant spring wheat variety in the state right now?

- Dagmar is number one, has been for a couple years running.

It comes from the transition between Luther Talbert and Jason Cook.

And it was one that we had no idea, well, I shouldn't say we have no idea.

It has been phenomenal.

It expressed all its strengths during a couple drought years and it's just continued from there.

- So how many acres, roughly?

A million acres of Dagmar?

- What's the percentage?

- Yeah.

- I don't remember.

Jason just updated me the other day, but it's substantially.

- So you start in about 12 years period of time.

You go from a half dozen seeds to 500,000 acres or whatever.

- Easy, yes.

- It's an amazing process.

- It's a testament, Jack, to our breeders, our locally adapted varieties, and our testing throughout the state, because our winter wheat and spring wheat varieties developed at MSU are the number one growing varieties in the state.

So that locally adapted work is really helping off and paying off for our producers.

- And that's why we have some of the best grain in the northern hemisphere.

There's no doubt about that.

- Bobcat would be the equivalent in the winter wheat.

Number one variety for- - And how long did it take to surpass or become the number one variety after release?

- Well, you know, and it takes a little bit.

If you, you know, let's just take the Bridger chickpeas, for instance, which came out of Kevin McPhee's program, and is our first chickpea release.

We've released foundation seed last year, probably about 3,000 bushel went out to the Montana seed growers.

They raised it this year and that'll be grown, it was grown as registered, but they can grade that as certified as well.

So some producers will get it next year, but even when it gets to the seed increase, it's two or three years before anybody can, you know, everybody could have access to it.

- Mm-hmm.

- That's interesting, and thanks.

I've always wanted to know that answer.

Now we had a comment.

And by the way folks, I've said this a couple times this fall.

If you have comments and they're not too negative, we'll put 'em on the air.

Believe me, I'm not bashful about doing that.

Polaris, near Bannock.

- Okay.

- Mm.

- South, south.

- Down there.

- Okay.

- Okay.

- So we learned something about Montana.

- Yes.

- Perfect.

- Frank, from Helena, they've been seeing big, yellow-headed wasps around their house recently.

They wanna know, are these the murder hornets?

- I can guarantee you they're not the murder hornets.

So luckily, the murder hornets have been eradicated, I think last year from Washington, But right now is a peak activity for a native sawfly called the tremex pigeon wasp.

And it is a sawfly, so the ovipositor is shaped like a saw and they will actually drill into the stump of trees or the trunk of trees and lay eggs in the those trees.

So it's flying around.

It's a solitary wasp, totally native.

- Do people need to worry about this for stings or anything like that?

- No stings.

They don't sting people.

They don't have any venom like a regular wasp.

- How many different types of wasps?

This is a loaded question.

- Oh, my gosh.

How many different- - A guess.

- Well, so most wasps are actually parasitoid wasps.

So if you think about every single insect has probably a wasp to it.

So we could say - [Jack] Thousands.

- Millions.

- Millions.

Millions of wasps.

- Okay.

- Nice.

- Why.

- If not billions.

- Okay, why have you, codling moths has always been an issue in the state.

It's an insect.

Between Frank and Abi, you guys want to discuss how you might control it?

- Sure.

- I'll give it to Abi here.

- Yeah, and I wanna give a shout out to the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

I was at their district meeting yesterday, so hello to all of you guys watching.

They're big fans of this show.

And this was one of the questions that they had and I thought Frank and I could chat about this a little bit.

But this time of year, for coddling moth management, one of the best things that you can do is sanitation.

And that's when you're gonna try and clean up all of those apples that may have those little holes in them in that fras.

Any kind of debris around the base of your apple tree, cleaning that up and sanitizing that area, you know, removing any places where those wasps are or where those caterpillars are gonna, they're pupae are gonna be overwintering and surviving.

So removing these from the landscape and taking them out of there can help reduce those populations a lot.

And then in the spring, you wanna watch for timing really well, and there are a few places you can track it.

We have a website called Utah TRAPs that tells you just the time of year when the activity's beginning and the best time to actually apply any sort of insecticides.

And there are also a lot of great resources at the Western Ag Research Center website on controlling codling moths.

- Okay.

My question, why not just let the deer come in and clean up the apples?

- You certainly can, yeah.

- I mean, it's a lot less work.

- Yeah, you certainly can.

Let the deer have a delicious protein-filled feast.

- And they will clean 'em up.

- Mm-hmm.

- But as as I understand, though, there's asking you to, in grizzly bear country, they're asking to clean up a lot of those apples.

So it might not be a bad thing anyways as we see grizzly bear or bear expansion throughout the states to maybe keep a cleaner orchard.

- Yeah, and that's especially true along the front range moving out in the prairies anymore because the grizzly bears have moved out in the Soto, even as far as, I believe, Stanford, they've seen them.

- Yep.

- So yeah, I'm joking.

Clean them up.

And I am lazy.

I've never met that.

There's no doubt about that.

This came in last week, another email question.

And how much of a threat is a spotted wing drosophila to Montana's huckleberry industry?

What is a drosophila?

- So a drosophila is a fruit fly in the short.

- Okay, any thoughts about.

- Well, there's a whole bunch of different, I don't know really much about it.

Can you, Abi, about the huckleberry plants?

- Yeah, I know about drosophila in general, but I don't know specific to huckleberries, but.

- Yeah, same.

- A lot of, like, thin skinned fruit are susceptible to drosophila.

And they lay their eggs, they'll oviposit their eggs into the fruit.

And their little larvae are gonna feed into it and they can be very destructive.

And so our cherries are one of the biggest kind of risk plants for those.

But anything that has that soft kind of thin skin fruit, like raspberries, could be a potential issue.

But in terms of haskap, I can't see it being a major threat.

- Yeah, the only thing I could think of is, I think, huckleberries, they're not grown commercially, right?

- Mm-hmm, yeah.

- So I would think because they're wild, you're not gonna have enough plants close together to really build up that population of those fruit flies.

And then also, we have that kind of fruit belt around the Flathead Lake for those flathead cherries.

And so that probably has a better climate, 'cause I know spot moving just off are a big deal with flathead cherries.

And I would think maybe the higher elevations for those huckleberries, they might be a little bit protected in that way, just through environmental factors.

- Okay, good question.

We don't have a perfect answer.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, it's hard to tell 'cause I don't think, there's not a lot of research kind of going into what's going on with huckleberries.

- Okay.

Doug, question from Belgrade.

They wanna know how you can become a certified seed grower?

- Oh, very good question.

I mentioned them a little bit earlier, but the Montana Seed Grower Association is right here.

It's on university's property at the Marsh lab there.

Heather Unverzagt is the director.

Rebecca Papke is in that office as well.

They work together and so you can contact them, get into their program, and it's not a hard program to get into.

And that's something we're talking about.

To be a seed grower, to get MSU seed, you need to be part of that group.

Part of, you know, there's the Montana Seed Trade Association that's in Montana as well, but there's groups, but that's who you would contact to become a seed grower in Montana.

And we do, actually, while our mission is to move seed to Montana's producers, that's our mission statement.

We probably distribute to 10 other states from Washington to Texas to, I think, over Nebraska, Kansas.

And so some of our genetics, I won't say accidentally because they're very good, will work in other states.

- That's good, yeah.

From Harlem, a follow up question.

They wanna know who monitors the quality of certified fields.

- That would be the quality of, that's gonna be Heather's office as well.

So what she has is a team of inspectors.

And so when someone has a, like, I'll just talk from foundation seed, but it doesn't matter if it's foundation, registered, or certified, if it's papered, it has to go through her office.

She has a entire squad of inspectors, who are gonna go out to that field.

The producer would've already had to submit the paperwork that says that it'll fit in terms of previous crop history, and they'll tell them where it's located, all those things.

And then an inspector will come walk that field very intensely, market for purity, genetic purity, but also if there's weeds in there, diseases, things like that.

And then, you know, it might be that it doesn't meet those qualifications, and maybe five of those acres get kicked out or the whole field might get rejected.

So then they'll stamp that as approved.

And then, of course, there's the harvesting component of that, where the producer will bring it in the seed grower, condition it, send it down to any seed lab, but MSU has one, and then it has to meet all of those specs as well in order to be papered.

- Okay, so here again my question.

So you have a field of certified Dagmar, and you have maybe a half a dozen plants that are a good six inches taller than the standard height of Dagmar.

Will that kick that field out?

Is there a level that- - There's a level of acceptance in there.

And so every variety has a variety description that the inspector goes out there and says, "You will see this, this, this and this."

If they find six of those heads that are, say, four inches taller than the others, it may be in the variety description, 'cause we'll write in variants.

The breeders will do that.

So it might be completely acceptable.

But if those were something that maybe were a different color or clearly a different and they're not in the variety description, it will raise a red flag.

Six of 'em, you know, in 200 acres or something probably isn't a big deal.

But if there was enough of 'em, that's an area of the field they'll take out if it's a planter contamination, something like that.

But it's a case by case for sure.

- Okay, good answer, thank you.

Shifting over Darrin, and this, again, how many people know where Warwick is?

- I do.

- You probably do.

I don't, but where is Warwick?

- It's in the Bear Paw Mountains.

- Big town?

- No.

All of 12 people probably.

- Okay.

- South Bear Paws, South Chinook, Montana.

- This question comes from Warwick.

It's an email question.

They've had over three inches of rain in August.

They have a four-foot tall cover crop.

What should they do about grazing it to remove the biomass with their cows?

- Wow, this is a very pertinent question.

In Havre, in the Bear Paws, and a lot of parts of the state of Montana have tremendous rains happening in the last week of July all through August.

I mean I've heard of up to six inches, Jack, in areas of Montana right now and it's unheard of.

It really bothered the grain guys as they're trying to harvest it out.

But a lot of people that have cover crops and have some tremendous cover crops.

So our recommendations is what species are you growing?

There's some species we need to little worry about.

If it's a blended cover crop, it's not as bad.

But one of the ones we worry about is sorghum- sudangrass, straight sorghum.

It can generate a thing called prussic acid.

So we don't want to graze it right after we have a hard frost.

We wanna give it at least two weeks, if not three weeks.

We want to graze it after it's 16 inches tall, which is not a problem with a four-foot crop, right?

So there's things to think about as we grow turn into that.

I just wanna turn out.

Quite often, I tell people not to turn out when the cattle are hungry.

Make sure you get 'em in an afternoon or after their morning grazing bout.

Make sure there's probably waterways or other grass species that they can help buffer themselves in good quality water and good quality mineral.

But there's a lot of green out there for them to graze.

- You know, I was out at Ron Carlstrom.

He used to be a county agent here in Gallatin County Farms out at Willow Creek and he has some cover crops out there.

I happened to be out there this week, and I noticed some turnips and radishes.

The turnips are close to baseball size.

And I remember when we used to choke cattle to death on beet tops.

- Yeah.

- Is there an issue with cattle grazing those turnips and getting stuck in their throat?

- We have heard of some, Jack.

We tend to see this and we tend to worry more about cattle choking on turnips.

Not so much radishes.

I've seen cattle taking radishes, 'cause they're usually longer and maybe bigger around in my thumb.

They look like a cigar almost in the cow's mouth as they're chewing 'em as they can get 'em pulled out.

But we see 'em in sandy soils, where we worry about those radishes, them plucking 'em up and getting 'em stuck and bloating.

But most of the time, if you can imagine, in Havre, Montana or someplace with heavy soils, you'd be darn hard pressed to get it pulled out.

And so we haven't seen any issues, but it's the sandy loose soils, where they get 'em up out of there.

- Okay, so why have you, I like to put you on the spot.

We have two questions here.

- Oh, no.

- Yeah.

- Is it multiple choice?

- There are different questions.

Number one, they wanna know why scholarship, Ag Scholarship Banquet was September 25th and not during Celebrate Ag Week.

That's question number one.

And this other caller from Bridger says they used to celebrate Ag Week in March in the past.

Has there been a change in the date?

- As far as I remember, Jack, I've always had Celebrate Ag sometime in November.

- Okay.

- But it's been Friday, Saturday.

It's been a very small event, we've expanded it.

The reason the Scholarship Banquet got moved to Homecoming is a lot of, as I understand it, is a lot of our donors are here and on campus for scholarship or for the Homecoming anyways.

So they moved it from Celebrate Ag, 'cause that's kind of a College of Ag event, right?

They moved that to a whole college wide so we can celebrate our great alumnis, celebrate our donors with our scholarship winners for Homecoming.

- Makes good sense to me.

- I think so.

- Was March when the FFA?

- Well, so they have John Deere Days and they just got past that a few days, about a few weeks ago, that's right.

So we bring up over 1,500 FFA members on campus for that, too.

- That's probably what they're referring to.

- Yeah, it might be.

- Okay, good question.

This person from Manhattan wants to know, how does a variety like Dagmar get its name?

How do you name these varieties?

- I've been around for quite a while and part of a lot of breeding programs all the way back to Minnesota.

And it's my favorite part is how these varieties get their names.

There used to be some steadfast rules as to how this happened, and then there's tendencies, and little gimmicks and things as well.

But it's part of the marketing of a variety.

So I think back over time, Dagmar is named after the town.

- Yeah.

- Dagmar, Montana.

Luster, Durham came out same time, they're right kind of next to each other.

So you'll find a lot of times, varieties are named after landmarks, after counties, after towns, mountains, Yellowstone, winter wheat.

That's very, very common.

In fact, I like when I'm driving around the state and I'll go across a little bridge, and it'll say Haymaker, and I'm like, "Oh that's where that name came from."

And so that's how it is.

But if you look at private industry over the years, they may go with something, you know, along the lines of muscle cars.

And they'll run, you know, Stingray and Chevelle, you know, some of these for a while.

I remember back in the '90s, movies, "Conan," "Rambo," those sorts of ones.

But, and there's always a tribute to the people, who are significant in agriculture.

Specifically, breeders, that'll have a variety named after them.

And then you just get the flat varieties that they'll tell you what they do.

I think it's some very successful malt Morex, it had more extract in it.

Robust, it had a very plump kernel.

It kind of told you what it did and we still see that.

But Dagmar comes after a town in in Dutton, same way with spring wheat comes after, a lot of 'em come after landmarks.

- You know, the one I remember was Redwin.

- Oh yes.

- Redwin was named because it was a red wheat and it was a winner, and it was a beautiful wheat.

- It was a red chaff winner.

And I think, about the same time, you would've had Vanna White wheat.

- That's true, I remember that.

Okay, let me get this one out here.

Caller planted corn in raised garden beds and the crop turned out not so good with hard scattered kernels.

What happened?

- So there are a few things that can happen if you have scattered kernels.

That could be a poor pollination issue.

Corn is wind pollinated, and each and every single one of those silks turns into a kernel.

So there needs to be pollen deposited on every single silk in that corn for you to have a nice ear of corn that has those nice juicy kernels.

In a smaller scale planting, like in a raised bed, that wind pollination can be a little bit tough.

So I know a lot of home gardeners that will shake those tassels to make sure that those silks get pollinated, so you have a really nice fruit set.

Another thing, if you're growing super sweet corn, and there is any other corn within a one mile radius that is not super sweet, you can have kind of cross pollination of that corn and that can affect the kernel.

You can have maybe starchy kernels or kernels that aren't sweet at all.

And that could be an issue as well.

- So scattered corn is one here on the cob, one there on the cob, is that right?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I just wanna make sure people understand what that means.

When I first, scattered corn?

It's all over the yard or whatever, I just don't know.

- I imagine the the kernels, yeah, are scattered around the ear.

- Pollination problem.

- All right, thank you.

- Okay, comment.

Thank you for the comment.

They believe that Polaris is located next to Maverick Mountain ski area.

So we're learning a little bit about geography this year.

- I'm googling it when I get home.

- Okay, double check it.

Wireworms.

They're a problem in grain, no doubt about that.

- Yes, yes.

But this person has 'em in strawberries and fallen apples.

Is that a problem?

- [Judge Loble] We're just talking about it right now.

- It just adds protein to it.

(everyone laughs) - I don't know how much you want some crunchy strawberries with some little added protein there.

What I can think of is, what I assume is the strawberry was probably on the ground at some point, 'cause a lot of times, wireworms are in the soil.

And so if it's on the ground, there'll be a way for it.

It'll go up and eat that ripe fruit.

And if it's fallen apple, of course, they'll find that ripe apple and they'll go up into it.

So getting it off the ground is probably the key thing to do.

- And I'm sure you can use the mulch, too, to kind of protect the, you know, create a barrier.

- Yeah.

- In-between your fruit and your soil.

- Yes, getting it off, yeah, I think, 'cause it'll make it harder for that wireworm to get up to that fruit.

- Okay, from Bozeman, this person wants to know, where is the majority of Montana certified seed produced, at given area of the state?

- Well, I can speak, the certified part of it is all over the state.

- Okay.

- We've got seed houses and seed producers in every corner.

Probably a little less as you get south of Billings and in the southeast part of the state.

But I do get along the highline and they're all over the place.

Now foundation seed and I think this might be where the question's coming from, the foundation seed that we grow is all right here in the valley, and MSU's got some farms around there that we use.

And we do this for a couple reasons.

Historically, we worked with the research centers a lot for foundation seed production.

But all the seed is getting conditioned in Bozeman at the post farm.

And then that's its distribution site as well.

So it makes sense to have all the production down here in the Gallatin Valley for logistics, but also it takes away a big, big hazard with hail.

Now we can have hail here, but not nearly as often.

And you would ask that question about the value.

I can't speak exactly someone might be charging for certified seed, but for foundation seed, if a bushel of winter wheat right now is going for, I'll say, 450, foundation's $42 a bushel.

So it's a high value crop.

MSU is very fortunate.

Darrin's helped with some of these things.

But you know, we got the post farm west of campus here.

There's 225 acres out there.

There's the Lutz Farm about eight miles north of town here, up by Spring Hill that we've got 600 acres, and then we lease 300 acres from the hospital on the east side of town for Dallas is out there with a number of acres.

And so you can find foundation seed and research at all of these locations, and might be why you see a combine or a big tractor going through town once in a while.

- With a big line of cars in back of it, yes.

- We try to do it as strategically looking out for everyone's safety.

- Okay, good answer.

Question from Helena.

A lot of the lilacs in Helena are turning brown and they've been told it's probably due to a fungus.

I would think it might be a leaf miner.

Well, what do you guys think?

- I mean if, if you see kind of a large scale damage, where it's turning brown, I think it's certainly could be a fungal issue.

We have had a lot of moisture this year.

Sometimes, later stage if you have seen a lot of powdery mildew, which lilac definitely gets powdery mildew.

At this stage, you might see the leaves starting to brown.

One of the best things to do would be to go to your county extension agents.

So you have Sofia Franzluebbers in Helena, she's amazing.

Take a sample in to her and she can look at it under a microscope and see if it is a disease issue, and then she can reach out to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab to confirm.

And that might be a good idea to make sure that you're preventing that issue next year if it is a fungus.

- Abi, could I follow up on that lilac?

I've got relatives in the Midwest, Minnesota specifically, and for two years in a row now, and I don't recall this ever before.

They have fall lilacs in bloom.

What causes that?

- Yeah, so sometimes, when plants are stressed out, they do strange things.

So if you might've had like an extra long growing season, you could have maybe, you know, a slower in the spring bloom.

So sometimes, if we've had winter damage on our early spring flowering shrubs, you may have new growth that then if you have a prolonged fall those plants are confused, so they're gonna produce a new crop of flowers.

I would imagine that is the case that could be going on.

I know someone else asked me, too, about other plants that don't normally bloom this time of year that are throwing out those blooms.

And it could be the plant, it might be a little stressed out or it could just be confused, 'cause you've had kind of a really long growing season, lots of moisture maybe in that late summer period.

- [Darrin] Better question is why are your relatives stressing their lilacs?

(everyone laughs) - No, I'm waiting for an answer.

- No, we just like lilac so much.

Getting them twice a year is just, we're thinking all beneficial.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It works, no doubt about that.

I've actually had a few bloom late this year, too, but I think we pruned them at the wrong time.

Darrin, this person from Great Falls has heard that the College of Ag, and you're very much in tune with this now, has a new initiative called the Value Added Initiative.

You wanna explain a little bit to this person in Helena what might be going on?

- Absolutely, yeah.

We've heard, Dr.

Bashua, I think, started in 2019 and I've heard my entire 32 years that I've been in Montana State University is that we need to start adding value to our commodities.

I often jokingly say that my most value added commodity is tires.

I rail in fertilizer, I rail my grain out of town, I rail food to my cattle, I my rail cattle out, right?

All I do is buy tires, right?

So how do we close the circle in Montana?

And so Montana State University College of Ag is actually investing in some process engineering, and we're eventually gonna start back with our Ag and Biosystems Engineering programs.

So we're trying to get a handle of how do we either fractionate these grains, how do we take 'em and take 'em apart in the state of Montana?

A good example right now, what we're talking about is you see an expansion in oil seeds throughout Montana, right?

It's a rotational crop.

So can we take these oil seeds or other types of crop, fractionate 'em, maybe take off the omega six fatty acids, right?

Take the other type of oils and put them to a sustainable aviation fuel for a refinery in Great Falls, and take the milk seed that's left that has a high energy value, high protein value, put it into a livestock cake right here in Montana.

We've closed the circle.

And we've take the high value small product out and distributed that out throughout the United States, wherever it needs to go.

So we're trying to do more of that in Montana.

And it's not just grain crops, we can do this with livestock.

And you've seen this with a great initiative with the Montana Department of Ag and initiatives on how do we get more processing centers in Montana, right?

And so we can do direct marketing from producers to various cities throughout the United States.

So that's what we're talking about, is how do we capture as much as we can.

- Okay, you know, you brought in a slide that I almost forgot to show.

And we'll talk about, we got about three minutes left.

If we could bring up that photo of the sawfly damage.

- Yeah.

- And talk just briefly about how much our breeders have done to improve our variety, so we don't have as much sawfly damage.

So if we get, there it is.

Darrin.

- So I brought this in just so people talk about, they normally don't see what softly can damage this.

And this is a plot trial in Havre, and you can actually see one variety is standing up, and all those other varieties are laid down, right?

That's how these producers are, our breeders are selecting these varieties.

And so it's just a good example to key that up for Doug to say, you know, it took us 10 years to get here, but this is what it looks like as they're making some final selections.

- Which are some of the better sawfly-tolerant varieties?

- The newest one would be winter wheat.

Dagmar is probably one of the better ones for spring wheat.

But you know, they started doing these, I think releasing 'em in the mid '90s.

And so it's been a pest, a significant pest for decades.

- It's still out there, but it's not as bad as it was 20 years ago.

- Well, I would say every bit as bad, Jack.

It's an endemic pest.

- Yeah.

- It is adapted to wheat, but it's starting to expand out of Montana, into Eastern North Dakota, down to Nebraska, Wyoming.

It's is becoming a national problem.

- And exploring into newest crops.

We just now see some damage in barley, some Durham.

So it's- - Is it the same actual species of sawfly that's in the barley, that's in the wheat?

- That's my understanding.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Dr.

Weaver would know that for sure.

- Yeah, I only know of one species.

- Okay.

- In Montana.

- All right, Abi, this person quickly, winterizing trees for the winter.

Mainly orchards.

- Yeah, so you wanna make sure that as soon as those leaves start to change color, that they're getting plenty of moisture to get through that winter.

So give them a nice deep soak around the drip line.

So right outside where those really active roots are, make sure that they have plenty of moisture.

And then for a lot of those fruit trees, they can have thin bark.

So you wanna wrap those with, you can see those white kind of plastic wraps that are flexible that grow with the tree.

Wrap them so you don't have any kind of sun-related injury in the winter, southwest injury or sunscald.

But that moisture is key.

- Can you use whitewash?

- Yes you can.

Yeah, you can use, yeah.

- So I hear the music, which tells us that we are about finished for this evening.

I want to thank the panel, Doug, especially you.

I learned a lot.

And I'm capable of still learning a little bit, but it was a fun, we all learned a little bit about it.

Next week, we're gonna have Steven Vantassel, Critter Ritter from the Department of Ag.

You wanna be there next week.

Have a good week, good night.

- [Narrator] For more information and resources, visit montanapbs.org/aglive.

(bright uplifting music) - [Announcer] "Montana AG Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension, the MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture, the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, Cashman Nursery and Landscaping, the Gallatin Gardeners Club, and the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

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