- Author: Mark E Lundy
We're off to a good start to the rainfall year! As farmers begin to turn attention to fall-planted small grains, be sure to check out UC's extension resources on the UC Small Grains Research and Information Center and the associated UC Small Grains Blog. Resources include the following:
The California Weather Web-Tool provides site-specific precipitation and temperature data for customizable date ranges and includes 10-year averages and a 10-day forecast. Read...
- Author: Mark E Lundy
- Author: Taylor Nelsen
- Author: Nicholas Clark
- Author: Michelle Leinfelder-Miles
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UC Davis and UC Cooperative Extension are excited to share newly developed tools that optimize nitrogen (N) fertilizer management in wheat and other small grains. The new tools and case studies illustrating how they've been applied in commercial settings will be discussed at an upcoming webinar on 11/4/2021 from 2-4 PM (2 INMP/CURES CEU credits available for those who REGISTER).
These tools are the product of many years of UC research and include an interactive website that provides customized, site-specific nitrogen fertilizer recommendations. Recommendations are based on monitoring of crop health and...
- Author: Konrad Mathesius
- Author: Mark E Lundy
- Author: Nicholas Clark
- Author: Jose Luiz Carvalho de Souza Dias
Dry conditions this year have generated common questions from growers such as “when should I irrigate to maximize yield?” and “will I be able to take this crop to seed?” Many of the principles that dictate irrigation strategies in wheat are similar to those of other crops. Understanding wheat's growth stages can help growers develop a strategy for drought years.
Important Physiology
Relative to many crops, small grains are considered plastic, or flexible, in their growth habit and yield potential. This means that the crop adjusts its growth to the scarcity or abundance of resources (water and nutrients) encountered during the season. The impacts of stress on crop yield are not...
- Author: Konrad Mathesius
- Contributor: Thomas Getts
- Contributor: José Luiz Carvalho de Souza Dias
- Editor: Brad Hanson
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Concerns about a growing resistance to herbicides
In Mediterranean or arid climates, particularly in areas with marginal soils, crop rotations are often limited to a narrow range of hay, pasture, a handful of winter legumes, or rainy-season grasses. Arid conditions and weathered soils drove Australia's rainfed grain growers to adopt no-till strategies earlier than their counterparts in California. While beneficial from a water use perspective, successful no-till systems depend on herbicides to control weeds that were traditionally kept in check with tillage.
Dependence on herbicides alone in these systems has resulted in weeds with resistance to multiple modes of action. In Australia, there is one...
- Author: Konrad Mathesius
Summary Note
Mechanical cultivation is a useful tool in controlling herbicide-resistant Italian ryegrass individuals in a rainfed wheat system but is only about half as effective as Axial in reducing overall pressure from Italian ryegrass (expressed as a percentage of total groundcover). Growers should consider multiple approaches (chemical and mechanical) and integrate IPM strategies to reduce the spread of resistance among Italian ryegrass individuals.
Background
Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) has been shown to be a persistent weed for growers in rainfed winter grass...