(upbeat music) - Hello everyone, and welcome to SUNUP.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

We join you today from the North Central Research Station at Oklahoma for the Annual Wheat Field Day.

First up today, we're talking about the quality of the crop out here, and taking a look at the latest variety trials.

- One of the great things about Oklahoma is getting a chance to look at our OSU wheat varieties and how they're performing right here at the North Central Research Station.

So Amanda let's dive right in.

Well, what are you telling producers today?

- So here today, we have about 50 wheat varieties and basically what you're looking here, it's in this first four ranges, we have varieties under what we call standard management practices.

So they're all planted at 60 pounds per acre.

We have a medium nitrogen rate, no fungicide application.

And then in the back, we have our trials under intensive management.

So basically we have seeds per acre basis.

So all wheat varieties are planted on a 1.2 million seeds per acre, additional 50 pounds of nitrogen to what we did in this trial and two fungicide applications.

So it's basically looking at this as a system, possibly this year we are not gonna have any fungicide effect but it doesn't really matter because we are not intending to separate factors for this intensive management.

So we really wanna see varieties potential in performancy when we try to push for yields when we manage it a little better, so, or better or more.

And so basically that's what we are seeing.

Here producers have the chance to look at varieties.

So we have a little bit of barley yellow dwarf here so they can look some of them, they can look at a stand, they can look how they are holding up during this drought year.

I will say that this is one of the best looking wheat variety trials that I have seen so far under dry environments.

- Yeah, I mean the wheat looks really, really good.

And you mentioned those dry conditions, drought is obviously on the mind of a lot of producers.

Are those some of the questions that you're hearing about today?

- Yes, and it's more like more than a question, is just fact at this point, right?

I was just up at Northwest early this week and this week, and we are seeing a lot of drought stressed wheat.

So a lot of short stand and it's a thin crop and it's the, it's a struggle, but producers are very resilient people.

Wheat is a very resilient crop and it's amazing to see how the wheat is fairing considering the little bit of water that we got.

It was impressive to see at our plots at Alva, for example.

We are finding some diseases and mite is still active in some of these locations so that doesn't help our drought stress wheat not much we can do at this point.

And so that is a little, it's a little more tough and adds up on our stress here, for sure.

- So what type of varieties in particular are gonna hold up better with those drought conditions?

- Well, in some varieties just do have that drought tolerance in their genetics.

And that's what it is.

So it's just depending on genetics at this point, and we can see that.

So you see that it doesn't reduce its height as much, it doesn't reduce its tailoring ability as much, but in some situations like when we were Southwest Oklahoma, the drought is just too much.

And so it's almost difficult to see any difference among varieties.

It's just so, so bad.

- What are some other questions that you're hearing about today in regards to these varieties?

You've already done a few talks today.

So what are some other questions that producers are asking you?

- Well, they are always interested to learn about other traits.

Like disease is not a problem this year but usually stripe rust, leaf rust.

We are hearing a lot of fields with wheat streak mosaic viruses and what they can do.

Ground weed mites it's been a big issue this year, but other than that, we are just like we keep praying for rain.

So we have enough water for that crop to keep filling up the grain.

And that is going to be very important right now.

- And there's still a lot going on but at least today it's not windy out here at Oklahoma, - Yes.

- like many years passed.

- Yes, those hot windy days is not really helping our crop at all, so.

- All right, thanks Amanda.

Dr. Amanda Silva, small grain specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Mesonet weather report, I'm Wes Lee.

We are in a time of year when we normally receive the rainfall we need to grow the vast majority of our summertime forages.

Rains have been scattered at best across the state.

Again, this week with limited amounts of moisture again in the Western half.

This seven day rainfall map from midweek shows over an inch of rain was received at a handful of sites from Love County up to Nowata County.

West of there amounts were much less mostly a 10th of an inch or less.

Looking back for the last two weeks, we pick up some heavier rainfall amounts, even in some of the dryer areas.

The reds show where heavy storms created some flooding events in the East Central to Northeast regions.

The Southwest probably saw some of the best rains they have had in a very long time that might just buy them a little cushion waiting on the next rain.

Not much relief however for the Panhandle region.

These rains are lack thereof show up on this 16 inch soil moisture map.

The yellows and reds continue to show the areas of the most concern.

- Rain probabilities pick up over the weekend and hopefully will continue next week, at least in the east, as seen on this Week Out Forecast Map.

Gary is up next with the latest drought maps.

- Thanks, Wes, and good morning, everyone.

Well, we're starting to get a much more clearer drought picture after the little bits of rain we've had over the last couple of weeks after that much bigger period of rain over the last month or so.

Let's take look at the newest Drought Monitor Map and see where we're at.

Well, in a nutshell, the eastern half to a third of the state basically completely out of drought, other then a little bit up in north-central and south-central Oklahoma.

We do have that sliver of no drought extending down into southwest Oklahoma, so generally good in that part of the state.

However, in the western half of the state, long-lived drought all the back from last August, September in 2021.

Much of the area covered by extreme to exceptional drought.

A little bit of moderate to severe sprinkled in there where that little bit of rainfall was falling over the last couple of weeks.

Now, spring thus far has been pretty good to much of the eastern half of the state.

Again, a little bit too much there in east-central Oklahoma where 18 to nearly 25 inches of rain has fallen.

But much of the eastern half of the state, above 10 inches of rainfall.

That's enough to keep them out of drought worries.

They do continue to need rain, of course, as we go into the summer.

That western half of the state, generally less than five inches of rain.

And that will not get you out of drought trouble, especially when that drought's been going on for eight to nine months.

So definitely need more across western Oklahoma.

The deficits and surpluses for the spring thus far, seven to more than 12 inches above normal across the east-central parts of the state.

Again, too much in those areas, inflating going on.

But in general, the western half of the state looking pretty good for the spring, close to normal, a bit above normal.

That area to the west of I-35 though, in general, again, from two to as much as five inches below normal.

Definitely not enough to alleviate drought in those conditions.

Going to the Percent of Normal Map, it shows up pretty well.

The spring thus far, those oranges, yellows, reds, deficits continue.

Dire drought conditions in those areas where those dark oranges and reds show up.

Across the eastern part of the state, though, again, generally, east of I-35, those surpluses over the spring have helped alleviate drought and of course, create many problems with flooding when we get into the east-central parts of the state.

That's it for this time.

We'll see ya next time on the Mesonet Weather Report.

- We're here now at Lahoma with Dr. Brett Carver, OSU's Wheat Geneticist and the leader of our wheat improvement team.

Brett, it's always exciting to be out at Lahoma and we're here now with some potential candidates.

Tell us what that all means and kind of what you're looking at.

- Right, so candidates means we're thinking about actually launching something, a commercial release for growers to grow and for the milling and baking industry to use.

- So let's talk about a few of these varieties in particular, and obviously, you're looking at yields.

But you're looking at certain unique qualities that would be interesting.

Get us up to speed.

- With wheat, we can look at a lot of different quality factors, but the one that stands out probably the most and is the most significant to our industry is the gluten quality.

The better the gluten quality, the better we can make a loaf of bread, basically, in very simple terms.

And these lines were bred for the purpose of maximizing the strength of the gluten.

This is not done through GMO or anything.

This is conventional wheat breeding, but it's utilizing genetics we've never utilized before in the hard red winter wheat class.

- So let's talk about different qualities that you're looking at with some of these varieties and why they may make good candidates for release.

- So this one that I'm standing by is the one that we're focused on immediately.

And it has a pretty long number, name to it with all those digits and numbers, but the 8-29 is the one that we often speak about in public.

That's just my way of knowing, okay, that eight means that it's a Gallagher background.

The 29 means, hey, it was just one of those lines that came out of the Gallagher family.

And I have Gallagher, actually, behind me.

So our viewers today and our tour participants will be able to see, side-by-side, what these look like.

And they should look like twins.

And they do.

From a visual standpoint, you really can't tell the difference, but you can start to tell the difference when you thresh the grain, you mill it, and then you look at the dough.

And the dough is just totally different.

- So speaking of the dough, how does this translate or what does this mean in terms of food labeling and how does that all connect?

- With food production today, particularly bread production, we're doing it so much faster in our plants.

I mean, it's just, we're cranking out loaves of bread at over 100 loaves per minute, when it used to be half that many 30 years ago.

And that requires a certain level of dough strength, other characteristics as well, but a certain level of dough strength to allow the rigors of that process to carry out.

We have good dough strength already in varieties like Baker's Ann and Douplestop, but now we're talking about a different stratosphere of strength.

This will be compared to Canadian or perhaps our hard red spring class of wheat in the northern United States in terms of its strength.

We do not have at this level of strength in our hard red winter wheat class right now.

- And that's what you're hoping - This variety could achieve, and then maybe - That's right.

- some of these other ones that are in the queue, if you will.

- Yeah, and if we achieve that, then now this changes what goes on the label.

One that you'll see often is gluten itself.

Vital wheat gluten is being added to bolster the strength, to allow this processing to occur, or the speed of processing.

We think we can do that naturally through our wheat varieties themselves.

You'll also see other additives on the label, names that you might not recognize.

But often you will see the words dough conditioner, and there may be three or four dough conditioners being added to the recipe or the formulation.

This takes the place of some, if not all, those dough conditioners.

- That is kind of revolutionary then, isn't it?

- It is, and there's value to that.

There's value to the baking industry, of course, but there's value to the farmer.

Now the farmer can produce lots of bushels.

There's value to that, of course.

But what about the quality of those bushels?

There's quality in those bushels that can not be found in any other bushel of wheat, of hard red winter wheat, so I think it's exciting.

- [Woman] Very exciting.

- [Brett] Yeah.

- Let's talk briefly about some of these other potential contenders down the road.

What are you seeing here?

- Just a quick view of them.

These are follow-ups to the 8-29 that, we want to see a continuous pipeline of genetic material coming out of this program.

This is a quality focused breeding program, or a part of our program.

And so these will be perhaps, you know, if everything works out, our release is two years from now.

And then beyond that, we have material that's not even in this field, but there is one other line that we probably should mention.

I mentioned the Gallagher-derived line back here, the 8-29.

We did use other backgrounds.

It just so happened that working with Gallagher not only gave us the agronomic strength, but it gave us the baking strength on top of what we're using for the certain gluten proteins we were targeting, we were introducing to that Gallagher background.

Now we have a different background that, well, I can't give you a name because there is no name for it.

We never released it.

I can just say that the genetics would be tied to experimental lines in our program.

So it's still OSU material.

It's still just, you know, good Oklahoma genetics, but I think this one is a little bit different agronomically.

It can go farther south than the Gallagher derivative, but also this one doesn't have quite the strength that the 8-29 has.

It has a little bit more extensibility, so now it has more of the total package.

The 8-29 might be used as an ingredient.

This one could be used as a stand-alone.

Big difference.

- So this is a variety we're really keeping a close eye on.

- Absolutely.

Yes.

- Okay, Brett, thanks a lot.

And we'll continue our conversation with Dr.

Carver on next week's show.

(playful country music) - We're back to the Lahoma Field Day, talking to our crop marketing specialist, Dr. Kim Anderson.

Kim, there was a big WASDE report that just came out, so what were the wheat estimates?

- The numbers that came out yesterday include the '21-'22 marketing year, really the final numbers for those, and the '22-'23, the next marketing year.

You look at U.S. wheat production.

It came in at 1 billion, 730 million bushels compared to last year's 1 billion, 650 million, so about 100 million more bushels of U.S. wheat production.

However, hard red winter wheat was 590 million bushels compared to 750 last year.

So hard red winter wheat stocks that were already tight are gonna get tighter.

If you look at Oklahoma production, they came out at 60 million.

Remember the crop tour was 58 million.

Last year was 115 million bushels.

World production came out at 28.5 billion compared to 28.6 last year, so about the same production as last year.

When you look at ending stocks, U.S. ending stocks are projected to go from 655 million bushels down to 619.

World ending stocks are projected to go from 10.3 billion, and remember, world stocks came down this year to that ten three, they're projected to be 9.8 billion next year.

So stocks of wheat are projected to tighten up through the '22-'23 wheat marketing year.

- So what about wheat prices?

- Well, if you look at wheat prices, of course, they went relatively high, increased the last couple days after that report.

In Oklahoma, went above $12 a bushel for harvest delivered wheat.

The question I'm getting from producers is, how long's it gonna stay this way?

I think wheat prices can stay high for two to three years.

The joker in the deck is Russia and Ukraine.

Russia's coming out with a record crop this year, about 3.2, 3.3 billion bushels compared to two eight last year.

You got Ukraine, their production numbers was 60.

- Percent of normal.

However, they've got their bins full of wheat because they haven't been able to export the last four or five months of the marketing year.

- What about corn and soybeans?

- Well, if you look at corn and beans production for 2022 at 14.5 billion, that's down from 15.1 last year.

That's expected because of the lower of acres and high nitrogen prices.

Any stocks for corn, it's projected to go from 1 billion 440 million down to 1 billion 36 million, so lower.

Any stocks tighter, any stocks for corn.

You look at soybeans.

A record, 4.64 billion bushel crop compared to this last year's record of 4.4 billion.

Ending stocks for beans although, so is expected to go up, still tight though.

Expected to go from 235 this year to 310 last year.

- So what, you know, what advice are you offering to producers?

- There's a lot of uncertainty in this market right now.

There's a lot of risk in lower prices.

Something could happen to cause prices to just crash.

I'm telling the producers don't sell it all at once, A third and a third and a third used to be my advice.

I'd probably go a fifth to fifth and a fifth.

Stagger it out over time.

And if you can sell wheat for $12, take advantage of that.

If you can sell corn for 6.50, $7 or higher, take it.

$14 beans, take advantage of those prices.

You don't have to sell it all.

I would save a thousand bushels here, and a thousand bushels there in case we did have $14 wheat, or in case we did have 8 or $9 corn, or we had $18 beans.

So I could take a truckload in and go to the coffee shop and say, "Hey guys, I sold at these high prices."

- All righty, thanks Kim, Dr. Kim Anderson, Crop Marketing Specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

(upbeat music) - We're joined now at the Lahoma Field Day by Dr. Meriem Aoun, our Extension Wheat Pathologist, and Meriem give us an idea of some of the updates that you've been talking about at the field day.

- Yeah, I was giving growers updates on all the diseases that we saw this season.

So basically because of the drought, things were a bit late in terms of fungal diseases.

But I would say from early May, we start seeing viral diseases, mainly barley yellow dwarf virus.

That is a virus transmitted by cinara aphids and also wheat streak mosaic virus that is transmitted by wheat curl mite.

Oklahoma is known to be a hotspot for barley yellow dwarf virus.

But I was surprised to see many of the samples that were tested positive this year are for wheat streak mosaic virus.

So that's something that was common in previous year in the Panhandle area but not in other areas in Oklahoma.

I also saw late in April and early May, root rots, and those are diseases that are known to be favored by drought conditions.

So even they, like the plants, were stressed while the growing season, but those damage they are more obvious later in the season.

So when you go in the field and see white heads, and sometimes it's not only the head, the whole plant can be white and stunted.

And those are typical symptoms of root rots, if you are an area where drought is common.

Another thing that I saw after the rain early this May were rust diseases.

- So in terms of where we are in the growing season at this stage, where the wheat's getting more mature by the day, are there some treatment options or some things that producers can consider?

- I would say, I will start with viral diseases.

We can't do much this year, but in coming years, we should choose resistant varieties.

Encharted is a good option for barley yellow dwarf, that's an OSU variety.

It has two resistant genes for barley yellow dwarf.

And Breakthrough is another variety that has resistance to wheat streak mosaic virus.

For rust, I think now we are late in the season.

So I don't expect that we will have really a great impact on the yield because... and also we don't have options for fungicide to treat now.

Our wheat fields, they already past flowering.

So I don't see the right now the need because they...

I didn't see rust other than in Stillwater.

I didn't see rust in other fields.

So the disease pressure is still low.

And we also, our wheat fields, they passed the flowering stage.

So we cannot really have much options for fungicide.

- And then you rely on producers sending you samples from around the state, so you can kind of have a picture of what everybody's dealing with.

Talk about the process for them sending you samples and how they can get involved in that and how that works.

- Yeah, so it is really important to know the races we have in our region.

And that will help us to determine the resistant genes that we need to deploy in our varieties.

So they can take a sample.

- And put it in an envelope and keep it like the leaf to be expanded as much as possible and let it drive for one or two days and then ship it to our... to my lab at the NRC building.

It is 127 Noble Research Center at the Department of Entomology and Penn Pathology at Oklahoma State University.

- Okay, fantastic.

Well, great information.

Thank you very much for the update and we'll see you again soon.

(upbeat music) - Good morning Oklahoma.

Welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

For the past several months, a frequently asked question, of me and my friends and colleagues.

Can we afford to fertilize our Bermuda grass this year?

Today we address that topic and we start off with just trying to take a look at the bottom line facts here, unique to our particular operation and some of the things that I can present to you this morning.

First of all I encourage producers to take inventory of how many cows and how many calves you're gonna be running?

Over the next few months or the next year.

And we're gonna have to fertilize that Bermuda grass to get the productivity out of it that we need.

Now, typically, this would be a pretty simple thing if we were getting normal rainfall and we weren't in a drought for the most part of the entire state of Oklahoma but that definitely complicates that decision on whether or not, we're gonna put down fertilizer or how much fertilizer we're gonna put on the Bermuda grass this year?

So let's begin by taking inventory of cows and thinking about how much tonnage of forage we need to produce?

There's information on this in the OSU beef cattle manual, general rule of thumb, a cow is going to lay on defecate on or eat a little over 40 pounds of forage a day a 300 pound growing calf is gonna consume about nine pounds of forage dry matter a day, 600 pound calf about twice that much.

So we're gonna fertilize relative to how much we need to produce.

We know that the Bermuda grass in Oklahoma can be a highly productive grass but as an improved grass it is something that needs to be farmed in a sense it's gotta have weed control or herbicide.

It's gotta have the nitrogen that it needs and it's gotta have the moisture.

We know that this linear response to fertilization that Bermuda grass has, we're gonna start if about 50 pounds of actual nitrogen or say about 109 to 110 pounds of Urea fertilizer is gonna give us about a one ton yield per acre and for every additional 50 pounds of nitrogen that we put on that Bermuda grass we expect about an additional ton of forage production.

Again, that's assuming we get the moisture and then we've got weeds controlled in that stand of Bermuda grass.

I hope this helps.

I know it's an interesting decision this year, a colleague of mine JJ Jones has actually done some economic analysis on this that shows that Urea up to a thousand dollars a ton is still more cost effective to apply to our pasture and grow that forage as opposed to feeding harvested forage.

Thanks for joining us this week on Cow-Calf Corner.

- That'll do it for us this week.

Remember you can see us anytime at sunup.okstate.edu and also follow us on YouTube and social media from the North Central Research Station Oklahoma, I'm Lyndall Stout, have a great week everyone and we'll see you next time at Sunup.

(upbeat music)