COLBY, KANSAS, US — In about seven weeks, central and northern Kansas farmers will harvest a larger wheat crop than in 2024, albeit one where production will be limited by drought stress and wheat streak mosaic virus.

Those were the findings of 66 wheat scouts who appraised and measured 196 wheat fields along six color-coded routes through the northern and central cropping districts of the top production state for hard red winter wheat during the 67th annual Hard Winter Wheat Tour. Those field stops generated an estimate of 50.5 bushels per acre, which compared with 49.4 bushels per acre based on 206 field stops during Day 1 of the 2024 tour. It was the highest Day 1 yield estimate since scouts estimated 59.2 bushels per acre in 2021.

Scouts and a panel of wheat experts in attendance at the annual Day 1 dinner and meeting at Frahm Farmland in Colby said wheat fields in general were in better condition in east-central Kansas as the tour moved west and north out of Manhattan. Drought stress and the timing of rain that finally arrived in April and continued into early May left fields highly variable in terms of height and development stage.

Lucas Haag, an associate professor of agronomy at Kansas State University and a northwest area agronomist in Colby, commented on the variations.

“Something to think about when we do these yield estimates in a field with patches of wheat that did not emerge until this spring, it’s not uncommon, depending on where you’re standing in the field, there could easily be 20-, 30-, 40-bushel difference in yield potential based on whether it was fall-emerged or spring-emerged wheat,” he said. ‘The challenge we have right now is we’re getting far enough along in maturity that it’s getting harder and harder to visually pick out those differences. It’s starting to even out to the eye. Now if you’re actually out there doing head counts you would see that spatial variability. A lot of these fields with patchy emergence, I don’t think it’s out of the realm to say we’ve got 20 to 40 bushel difference in yield potential within the same field.”

Jeanne Falk Jones, a multi-county agronomy specialist with K-State Research and Extension, highlighted the dry conditions in Kansas during planting.

“In the end of September we were looking for moisture, Kansas was abnormally dry up to D2 (severe drought) going into drilling,” she said. “There was a little bit of moisture earlier, so some folks got in gear and went in and tried to get some wheat up while there was some surface moisture to get seeds germinated and get stands established. We did hit a breaking point when surface moisture ran out, and as a result we saw very poor stands that were established last fall and some of that wheat did not emerge until spring. We want wheat up and established with two or three fall tillers to get plants set. We were behind a little bit because it wasn’t emerged and growing. Some of it was germinated but still sitting below the soil surface. As a result, we had some blowing dirt conditions from some severe winds that came through.”

Romulo Lollato, an associate professor of agronomy at Kansas State University and an extension wheat and forage specialist, summarized the conditions during the growing season and the concerns about the crop in the six to eight weeks until harvest.

“The story for northwest Kansas is really similar to what happened throughout the remainder of the state,” he said. “It has been a few years since we had crop conditions as good as what we had in March. Then the drought came in and started bringing the potential down. Today on the green route, I was expecting the crop to be in better shape than it was, or at least drought effects to start further west. As far east as Jewell County, it was already pretty difficult conditions. Far southwest Kansas is in more severe drought than in the northwest. The main story here is the drought conditions that the crop has seen in certain parts of the state, and the wheat streak mosaic virus.”

Tour scouts comprise professionals along the wheat value chain, including producers, grain merchants, millers, procurement specialists, bakers and food manufacturers, along with academic scholars and the media. Government employees were excluded this year due to cutbacks. Scouts were set to depart Colby at dawn May 14 in reconfigured foursomes to follow traditional routes south and west before turning east toward Wichita.

The tour is held annually by the Wheat Quality Council, planned by its executive vice president, Dave Green, and hosted by Aaron Harries of Kansas Wheat.

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