- Author: Mark Lundy
While we don’t have control over when the rain comes, we do have control over how we react to it. If the rain arrives on the wheat’s schedule and you have a crop heading for a big yield, it will have different N requirements than one heading for more a moderate yield if the rain doesn’t cooperate. Splitting N applications in wheat is a somewhat common practice in the Sacramento Valley. However, we might be able to improve on the precision (When? Whether? How much?) of our N splits and our overall N management if we can inform our in-season N application decisions by real-time information from the crop-soil system. N fertilization is such a large proportional cost of wheat production, optimizing...
- Author: Mark Lundy
The value of a wheat crop depends not only on its quantity but also on its quality. As such, an important management objective for hard and durum wheat classes is simultaneously achieving both high yields and high protein. Historically, there has been a tradeoff: a high-yielding crop will have less N available for translocation to the grain during the filling period (because it used it to build the yield components) than a lower-yielding crop, so high yield can mean low protein. Wheat breeders are aware of this tradeoff and have been working (with some success! See above.) to minimize this tradeoff. Aside from choosing a variety with the potential for high yields and high protein, late-season N applications (from...
- Author: Mark Lundy
FYI: All information put out by the UC wheat breeding program and variety trials on a year-by-year and region-by-region basis can be found at:
- Author: Mark Lundy
Most California growers are likely aware of state regulations that will soon require some level of nitrogen budgeting at the farm level in many parts of the state. However, it is not only regulators interested in tracking and documenting nitrogen fertilization practices. This is a blurb from today's American Society of Agronomy Science Policy Report:
Fertilizing sustainable farms
In the future, farmers are likely to be faced with growing environmental traceability pressures that are largely driven by major retailers such as Walmart. Walmart, for example, is requiring food companies that use commodity grains to develop a “fertilizer optimization plan” as part of...
- Author: Mark Lundy
Evidence of the drought conditions are all around us. A few that I've noticed just today: orchards being irrigated in January; a rainfed wheat crop planted in October that still hasn't germinated; another wheat crop that's been at the 2-leaf stage for almost 2 weeks and is starting to show signs of severe moisture stress. It's hard to miss the biological consequences of California's driest year on record at the field level. I was curious to see a quantification at the regional level. Here are a few snapshots that I dug up:
The below image is a satellite-produced NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index--the "greenness" is a proxy for plant growth) image of a portion of the Sacramento Valley on October 15th, 2011. From...