Air July 18 2001

Thank you Mark, and good morning everyone. Just in case you'd missed it, next week is the Geary County Free Fair. You know where I'll be and if you have an emergency question, you'll have to come out to the fairgrounds and find me. Don't call out there and expect them to track me down. They won't even try. If you have to have an answer, come to the fair! And I hope you'll come to the fair anyway, because it's always a good time. If you are interested in seeing all the 4-H and open class exhibits, they will only be there on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, the 24th, 25th and 26th. If you come earlier or later, you may be disappointed!

I want to talk about wheat seed this morning. I want to talk about varieties, I want to talk about source of seed, I want to talk about Karnal Bunt. This was an interesting year. Our normal diseases didn't cause very much yield loss, yet our biggest rust problem came from a rust disease that we rarely see in the great plains. Looking over the preliminary wheat performance results from Manhattan we find some of the common varieties that were above average include Dominator, Karl 92, 2137, Onaga, and Jagger. Two of those varieties concern me - Karl and Jagger. They did well this year due to the lack of leaf rust. If we have a nasty leaf rust year, these two are toast. As always, spread your risk around, plant a couple three different varieties. 2137 was hurt by that blast of early heat in May, and the Stripe rust hammered it pretty good. Both of these are not normal occurrences. 2137 does have better leaf rust resistance than Jagger and I'd place money on it to do better next year. Where are you getting your seed? One of the best defenses against Karnal Bunt is buying seed from a reputable dealer with known origins. Now, while there is a lot we are still learning about Karnal Bunt, we do know that high quality seed treatments can certainly help reduce the risk. As time goes on we may well know some other control options, but for wheat planting this fall, I would strongly encourage you to make sure that all you plant is seed wheat that has been treated with a seed treatment that will control bunt. Karnal Bunt does not cause significant yield loss. But it does create a real marketing and processing problem because a very small amount imparts a strong fishy odor to the wheat, not something that we really want. Be smart, buy known seed and use seed treatments on everything.

This is Chuck Otte, Geary County Extension Agent, with Ag Outlook 2001.

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