(upbeat music) - Hello everyone and welcome to Sunup, I'm Lyndall Stout.

As Wheat Harvest continues around Oklahoma, we are continuing our discussions from the recent OSU Wheat Field Day at Lahoma.

First up is Dr. Brian Arnall walking us through some of the precision agriculture technology that's available to producers.

- At Lahoma Field Day today, and really excited to share some stuff we're doing.

Typically out here I talk about the wheat management strategies or other crop strategies as far as nutrient management.

Today though, took the opportunity to talk a little bit bit more about the technology that we're utilizing within my program, the Precision Nutrient Management Program, and the Sole Fertility program ran by Dr. Steve Phillips.

Our first first bit of technology right here is a Vera sled.

So this technology is actually a fairly old technology developed in the late nineties outta Kansas.

It's a very useful technology.

As we use this, these blades go on the ground and they send electrical conduct from one blade to the other, and it's able to measure soil texture, and so soil texture, the sand, silt, and clay particles of the soil drive a lot of the factors, water infiltration, water holding, plant growth, nutrient availability, and so we can map a filled soil texture with this machine quite effectively.

This machine is special for two other reasons, is one is traditionally these machines measure two depths.

We have a very special machine that measures three depths, so we're getting a better view from top to bottom about how the soil changes as texture goes to the depth.

Also, as you see right here, we have this other piece of equipment on, it's a blade that runs through the ground and emits near infrared and this near infrared.

As we go through the soil, we'll measure and tell us about the organic matter as we go across the field.

So two cool, very important variables, soil texture, and organic matter.

The challenge is, is you can imagine in Oklahoma in the summer when it hasn't rained, that getting this kind of machine into the soil, because we really needed about four to six inches into the soil, these blades can be a challenge.

So that's where we bring in another technology.

This is a electromagnetic sensor.

So if you watch the History or Discovery Channel, all those treasure discovery groups, somebody trying to look at archeology, they run EMs sleds to measure for metals and stuff in the ground.

A very same technology put on the tractor.

The electromagnetic signal that's sent in and bounced back up can measure soil texture across the field.

So it's a very useful way to do the same instrument, but we don't have to put it in the ground.

Now, in our research program, we're utilizing this in a very unique and interesting way, is we wanna understand how crops, wheat, soybean, sorghum, cotton and corn are responding to nutrients like phosphorus and potassium.

And so beyond the soil test, we're really wanting to understand what drives a crop responding to more phosphorus or less phosphorus and more and less potassium.

So we're using these to map these fields, and we're really mapping a lot of our research fields and farmer fields down to four foot deep using a range of soil sensors and soil sampling.

Other technologies that we're utilizing within the Precision Nutrient Management Program is the sensors and drones.

And so anybody that's ever watched, this is the original green seeker that was developed by Oklahoma State University in the late 90s, early 2000s, and it's really come a long way.

This is a bulky, heavy sensor.

We still use it for research, but it's not produced anymore.

So now we utilize a much more compact price effective sensor.

This is a green seeker, still the same company, it's Tremble.

The cool thing about these new sensors is they have Bluetooth and they link to an app that Oklahoma State developed, and so we can read with the sensor and it goes right to our phone.

Also, some of the three drones we utilize in the program, we go with our small Mavic.

This is a little handy dandy that takes us a couple minutes to get up in the air.

We're able to look over fields.

It really gives us a much better bird's eye view of a quarter section to know where I need to go to scout.

And finally, and probably the funnest or coolest toy by many capabilities is this fixed wing here.

And so the drones have gone a long ways, and so those quad copers, we can only fly a few fields on a battery.

This machine right here is so fascinating in that I can roll up into a field in any field in basically anywhere, use a map on my iPad to draw a boundary around the field or two fields or three fields.

In about five to 10 minutes, I can have a flight plan ready to send to this drone, which really, I just shake it and I throw it.

It flies the pattern that I requested to fly and then belly lands.

Once it belly lands, I'm able to take the SD card from the cameras, which are really the guts and bolts or these high definition in DVI-RGB and near red edge cameras.

We're able to take that data, those pictures, load 'em to the cloud and have that information stitched.

Now we have a.

- A picture of a field where I could see rows of wheat not long after it's planted, I can really get an idea of what I need to be doing as far as variable rate management, really cool technology.

I could then take that image, process it for PGR, for nitrogen, for what bit, and send that information immediately into something like a John Deere Ops Center, or Trimble, or Adcoms systems, and go right to the sprayers where they can make variable rate application.

So again, we utilize this field day not to really talk about the research outputs that we're utilizing, that we're doing in our programs, but talking about the technology that the precision nutrient management and soil fertility programs are running.

(upbeat music) - Hi Wes Lee here, and welcome to the "Mesonet Weather Report."

Wheat maturity is a little bit ahead of schedule this year due to the relatively warm winter.

This has us in a quandary of whether to hope for dry weather to facilitate harvest or for rain to head off summertime drought conditions.

Not that we really have any control, but it looks like rainy conditions are winning out.

The seven day rainfall map from midweek shows heavy totals in various parts of the state.

A two inch band in the south with localized numbers over five inches in the far southeast, a good one to two inches in the Northeast, and even a few one inch plus numbers in the drought stricken northwest.

On top of this, heavy rain was expected through the end of the week.

That will ultimately add to these totals.

Wednesday soil moisture levels were showing adequate numbers shown in green on this four inch fractional water index map.

A fractional water index of one is as wet, and zero is as dry as the sensor can read.

Soils in the top end of this scale will likely be too wet to hold up to combine equipment.

We are not sure how long it'll take to dry out, as next week's forecast continues a slightly wetter than normal trend.

Gary's up next with some long-term rain maps.

- Thanks Wes, and good morning everyone.

Well, we're gonna start with another troublesome drought map.

It's a little bit hard to believe with all the rain we've been getting, it just hasn't been falling in the right areas, so let's get right to that new map.

Well, unfortunately, the moderate to severe drought expanded across far Western and northwestern Oklahoma out into the far western panhandle and down into southwest Oklahoma and a little bit into central Oklahoma.

So a new area of drought.

These are areas that at least haven't gotten rainfall up through the Tuesday timeframe where the drought monitor map is considered for new rainfall.

So hopefully we get some rain after this map has come out, and we now have a better looking map for next week.

That's the hope, but it doesn't always work that way, does it, here in Oklahoma?

It is still shocking, but when you take a look at the Mesonet rainfall map for the last 60 days, we can kind of see why.

Ignore all those red and and orange colors.

Those are good rainfall amounts, even a little bit of the yellows, but when we get into those greens, those are the areas where we do see the problems with new drought developing or intensifying.

So it's pretty easy to see, but if we take a look at the departure from normal rainfall map for that same timeframe last 60 days, then we start to see those yellows and light greens, especially the yellows.

Those are where we don't get enough rainfall over that 60 day period, and again, those are the areas where that new drought has developed, and of course, when we want to explain the abundance of severe weather, close to a hundred tornadoes already, we can take a look at the departure from normal statewide average maximum dew point and air temperature graph.

This is for April 1st through May 29th, and what we see here is a lot of heat in the red and a lot of moisture in the green.

So sometimes those air temperatures and dew point temperatures over that two month timeframe have been 15 to 20 degrees above normal.

When you get that type of fuel for those super cell thunderstorms, then you get the unfortunate results that we've seen.

That's it for this time.

(twangy country music) We'll see you next time on the "Mesonet Weather Report."

- We're continuing our conversation this week with Dr. Brett Carver here at Lahoma.

You're our wheat geneticist.

We wanna reintroduce you and let's talk about OK Corral and kind of what's happening and what's ahead in the future.

- Yeah, a lot's been happening with OK Corral and maybe a little bit more than I ever expected as far as acceptance across the state, but this, as you can see, is a beardless or an awned wheat variety.

I would say it's the first one to take significant acreage in Oklahoma and the reason is it's like all the other varieties, you know, it yields like them.

It has quality like them, test weight, it has disease resistance, maybe better than many of our awned wheat varieties.

In fact, I must say that this was one of our.

- Best stripe rust resistant lines in the whole lineup, along with Smith's Gold that I mentioned, I think it was last week.

So that's saying something when you have that kinda resistance.

So we wanna repeat that.

- Sure.

- You know, we wanna be able to carry that traditional forward from OK Corral.

I've not been able to do it with OK Corral itself, but I've been able to do it with other beardless parents.

- Okay, let's talk about what you're seeing by the head.

- Yeah, so, yeah, and the first one is, it's not the first one that we've looked at.

There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of progenies that we look at every year that are beardless, that might succeed OK Corral someday.

This one, we first started testing in 2021, is a progeny of, well, the primary part of it is Gallagher.

Everybody's familiar with Gallagher.

And then there's an experimental line from Oklahoma, OSU.

And then, there is this beardless source that came from Bulgaria.

And I wanna say this really quickly, that Eastern European germ plasms, it's quite valuable to us.

And our germ plasm is quite valuable to Eastern Europe.

Bulgaria provided this through a testing network that we accessed the germ plasm in.

And wow, I think we've got the stripe rust resistance of OK Corral.

We have better leaf rust resistance in this line than OK Corral, which that's a step up.

Do we have the yield bump over OK Corral?

I want this year to really determine that.

- Okay, this one?

- But, we have other possibilities too.

Now, you know, I didn't mention this, but we should say that a beardless wheat gives us the option not just for grain production, and not just for dual purpose production, where it's used for, you know, a grazing in the fall and early winter and grain production in the spring.

But also now, what about just chopping it for silage or cutting for hay?

That is, the awnless wheat is much more valuable for that purpose, because the awns are not there.

They cause irritation to whatever's grazing or whatever's consuming that hay: cattle, for that matter.

And so we don't have that irritation with these beardless.

But if we're gonna use something for hay production or silage, we want tonnage.

And we want a vegetative state a little bit longer.

We want heading to be delayed.

We want, well, with tonnage, we want height.

And we don't see the height so much here because it was so dry, but this line would be at least that much taller under normal wet conditions that we would have in March.

And so now we had the tonnage, and we had that maturity, but again, we want the option still to go back to grain.

If somebody decides, "Oh, you know what?

The cattle market isn't that good this year.

Let's go all the way to grain production," this will do it.

The genetics on it quickly is Big Country and a derivative of Deliver.

- Okay, tell us about the excitement for the purple that is on its way.

- Yeah, so the purple wheat is kinda, it's related to this concept of phytochemicals being in plants.

And plants produce phytochemicals.

They're just natural substances that enable the plant to defend itself against nature.

But they also provide a very helpful benefit to humans.

We want a bigger show, something we can see, and that's the one thing about phytochemicals is, they often provide pigmentation.

Our pigment in red wheat is caused by the tannins not so much a helpful benefit to us.

But if we brought in, say, a purple pigment, that does have, is phytochemical, and in fact, that chemical is called anthocyanins, now we have a very helpful benefit to humans.

It took many, many years to do this.

We relied on germ plasm from Romania to access the purple seed trait.

We could've gotten it from other places, but we already had a standing and working relationship with the institute in Romania.

They had the germ plasm, and you can see it here, it's a little bit rough looking.

But it has purple seed.

And we crossed this line with Smith's Gold and Big Country to give us that Oklahoma orientation, that adaptation potential.

With double haploid production, we were able to speed the process up.

And the double haploids, again, were produced by Heartland Plant Innovations.

We have right now four progenies from that cross.

There will be many more coming.

But that's the first line of attack here is to have those four.

And this is one of those four.

We put two of them under foundation seed increase this year, anticipating we might be able to commercialize this.

And I think that is there, but we still need to work with industry to make sure we can get into the marketplace with it.

- Run the numbers for me.

What exactly are you talking about here?

- So yeah, we can measure anthocyanin content in the laboratory at OSU.

So the wheat has about 20 micrograms per grams of the anthocyanins.

Normally it would have less than five.

So that's a big jump.

Go to something like black bean, that's 20 to 25 micrograms per gram.

So we're in that category of a black bean and also a blackberry.

Not there with blueberries yet, but blackberry, yes, we're right on target.

- Best of luck with all of that.

We can't wait to hear how it goes and how OSU and your team are help contributing to that food is medicine conversation that is so important.

- Very important, thank you.

(upbeat music) - Good morning, Oklahoma, and welcome to Cow-Calf Corner.

- We taped this week from the Blueprint for the Future Part Two conference, here at the Totusek Arena.

We just finished up our first panel discussion on selection and mating, joined by my good friend and esteemed colleague, Dr. Bob Weaber from Kansas State University.

Bob, you kicked it off with a really interesting talk on selection and mating; cross-breeding, breed complementarity, heterosis.

- Yep.

- As some said, as we led into this conference and planned our topics, "Well, we've known about this forever," but we got some new information.

Tell us about this.

Why is it important?

- I think one of the challenges over time has been we get distracted by lots of stuff.

There's all kinds of things going on in our business, and sometimes it's easy to stray away from things that have been around for a long time, 'cause it's not the newest or latest, greatest stuff.

But we do have ongoing data collection around the breed differences.

So, the major US beef breeds are continually resampled by the US Meat Animal Research Center in Clay Center, Nebraska.

And so, we get real contemporary looks at, you know, how did the various breeds compare.

And then, subsequently, that information's also used to look at the heterosis effect, or the heterosis potential those different breed crosses exhibit over time.

'Cause we know, as selection happens, different gene combinations happen over time.

And so, we have different opportunities to utilize or exploit heterosis that those different breeds generate.

You know, bridged into the modern genomic technologies, one of the really interesting aspects for commercial producers is the ability now to genotype animals and determine their breed composition.

So, you can actually go find animals in, you know, subsequent generations of, say, F1-mated animals together and find the ones that most look like their parents in terms of breed composition.

'Cause we know that the equal breed proportions, whether that's half and half or quarter, quarter, quarter, quarter, generate more heterosis than other mixtures do.

- And so, the key take-home points you made from your talk, if we're gonna consider a cross-breeding program, you made some really good points to consider.

We know there's a lot of upside for the sake of heterosis.

What are those key points?

- Yeah, I think, well, one of the key ones to remember is crossbred cows drive the bus, right?

Two thirds, about, of the economic value of cross-breeding comes from having crossbred cows and the maternal heterosis they exhibit.

And that, in itself, creates a lot of the complexity in our system is how do we keep those and breed those, those crossbred cows.

But as you consider those different breeding systems that you might use to build crossbred cows, you know, the important considerations are how big's your herd, right?

So, different herd size have different levels of ability to manage breed groups and sire groups and so forth.

Whether you keep replacement heifers or not, right?

So, an F1, if you can buy, say, black baldy heifers and Charolais bulls, that's a real simple system that's really effective, can work really well.

So, herd size plays a key role in what system makes sense.

The other thing to think about is endpoint, right?

As we know, most cow-calf producers in the United States sell calves at weaning time.

Different set of traits, maybe, that drive value into the enterprise at that level, versus if we retain ownership on those and put 'em through a feeding facility.

And so, thinking through, you know, what breeds you put where to make environmentally adapted cows, and then mate those cows to bulls to produce optimally-valued feeder-cattle is a strategy we try and talk a lot about, to get people to think about, "Well, you know, I've got all these different breeds.

Where do I put 'em in the sequence?"

And that can make a big difference on the productivity and profitability, ultimately, of those different breeding systems.

- Bob, thanks for joining us.

Really interesting topic.

We appreciate you all joining us on "Cow-Calf Corner" and look forward to seeing you next week.

(upbeat cheerful acoustic music) - Well, it's that time in the show where we check in on the crop markets with our crop marketing specialist, Dr. Kim Anderson.

So, Kim, it's kinda hard to believe that harvest has already started, right?

- Harvest is running a couple weeks early, but the weather that we've got, the humid days, the cloudy, the intermittent rains is slowing it down.

That's probably a good thing, giving that wheat time to dry out, mature.

I think, if you look at the test weights, they're relatively good, well above 60 pounds.

There's some concern about protein.

If you look at the Kansas City protein premiums for 11% protein wheat, it's about 95 cents.

You go up to 1.2%, it's $1.05, increase of 10 cents.

Go up to 11.6, up to $1.15, a increase of 20 cents.

Big changes to 12, you go up to a $1.30; that's 35 cents above 11 protein wheat.

And at 13, it's a $1.45, or 50 cents above that 11 protein.

Now, a good portion of that protein's already in the market, so you gotta look at the basis; it's already got that factored in.

But if the protein comes in low, we're gonna have a protein premium this year.

- So, what are the market forces behind the recent price increases?

- Well, if you look at the big force, it's Russia.

I think we've had this increase in wheat prices, buck and half, buck 60, because the Russian wheat crop has been lowered, if you go back to January-February time period, from 3.4 billion down to 3 billion; that's 400 million bushel decline in Russian production, 200 million over the last couple weeks.

That 400 million is over half of the US hard red winter wheat crop.

So, that's had a big impact.

But if you look, increases with the WASDE, the world.

- Canada, Argentina, Kazakhstan, Australia, and the US are all having higher production than last year.

Russia, Ukraine, and the EU are having lower.

Of course, Russian Ukraine is hard, red wheat.

The European Union is a hard, soft wheat, or soft, red wheat.

- So how should producers sell wheat this summer?

- Well, we've talked about that a couple times and I wanna keep mentioning it.

You look at the chart, June, July, and August is definitely the time to sell wheat.

That average price since 2009 has been 5.84.

You get a .23 price drop from August to September and it goes on down from there.

So you want to sell in that time period.

If you're looking at timing your sales right now, you can sell for 6.80, 6.85 in Pond Creek area, 10 cents lower in the Panhandle, about 40 cents lower down in southern Oklahoma.

But if you look, we're coming in at 6.85 and that's above average.

And when you've got an above average price, your variability from June 1 through August 31 is $2.

So that means that from 6.80, we could go to 8.80 or we could go down to 4.80.

Or if it's a normal distribution, you're talking 5.80 to 7.80.

So 6.80 now, but we don't know if it's gonna go up or if it's gonna go down, and it can move a lot.

- So what's happening with the other grain prices right now?

- Well, if you look at corn, it's moving sideways, around 4.60 for harvest delivered corn.

Soybeans, we've had a little increase there.

They're moving sideways, not much happening.

11.30 for harvest delivered beans.

Cotton, it's, oh, gained a couple since the last couple weeks, but the December contract's at 78 cents.

That implies about 74 cents at harvest for cotton.

- All right, thanks, Kim.

Dr. Kim Anderson, crop marketing specialist here at Oklahoma State University.

- Back to the Lahoma Field Day where OSU Extension agronomist Josh Bushong talks about wheat disease in the state.

- Today I stood in for a state specialist, Dr. Meriem Aoun, our wheat pathologist for the state, but talked about wheat diseases and how to control them, how to manage them in our wheat systems.

So the main one for 2024 was stripe rust.

That's been the story for the whole spring.

Definitely got its hold early on down south state.

But as we progress further north, north-central Oklahoma, it's still found.

You can definitely see the damage it's done in the lower leaf of the canopy.

But we still have some remnants that made it all up to the flag leaf up here even in north-central Oklahoma.

So stripe rust was the early issue we had and then we still have some leaf rust actually out here.

It's still thriving.

It's not really taken off, but it still can be found on some of these flag leafs.

We know a lot of producers that are changing the varieties more often, and since there's so many options to choose from, these trials are very beneficial to help select those varieties that's best suited in their area.

We have these variety trials over Western Oklahoma for a reason.

That's so we get more regional, local data for farmers to choose what variety works best for their system and what disease package and insect package, herbicide tolerant package, whatever fits their operations.

So going into this fall, guys are picking new varieties, be looking at those disease ratings.

Another issue that we often see this time of year is once we get those heads starting to finish out, some of them might start change.

One issue that we have seen as far as pathogen and the diseases go is common bunt or also known as stinking smut.

So with that disease, you'll often find those heads, those kernels affected.

But keep in mind, not only do we get that discount at the elevator, a price discount because of the smell, kind of smells kind of fishy, but also, that virus or, I'm sorry, that pathogen, that disease can only survive in seed as well as be soilborne.

So if we are looking for seed wheat or we're saving our own seed for next fall, keep in mind that we don't wanna be inoculating new fields with that.

And if we are using that for seed wheat, we wanna be using a seed treatment this fall.

The other smut is loose smut.

It's a little bit safer.

It's not gonna be soilborne, but it is seedborne.

You're not gonna get the price discount at the elevator like we do with common bunt or stinky smut.

But the loose smut, you often find those heads where the kernels kind of turn the powder, turn black.

But keep in mind that one head, you might not find that many of them, but those spores did infect several other heads.

So that's kind of exponential if you did find some heads.

And like I said, if you are saving that for seed wheat, be sure to be looking at a fungal seed treatment this fall when we start sowing our wheat.

(upbeat music) - That'll do it for our show this week.

In addition to watching us on OETA, you can stream us anytime on our YouTube channel.

Just go to youtube.com/sunuptv.

I'm Lyndall Stout.

Have a great week, everyone.

And remember, Oklahoma agriculture starts at "SUNUP."

(upbeat music) (bright music)