By Jeff Mulhollem
Growing winter wheat for both grain and straw production is common in poultry farms in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region, where grain is used for feed and straw is used for animal bedding. Grain yield can be improved by spraying plants with a regulator that halts vertical growth and makes them less prone to falling over, a phenomenon farmers call “lodging” that can greatly reduce grain yields. However, the effect of growth regulators on straw yield and quality was unknown, so a team of researchers at Penn State conducted a study to evaluate the effect of a growth regulator in combination with nitrogen fertilizer applied at different rates. The study was conducted on winter wheat field trials at Penn State’s Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center.
The researchers published their findings in Crop, Forage and Turfgrass Management.
“Farmers don’t want their wheat to get so high that it falls over and the grain is ruined, so many have been using plant growth regulators for a long time,” said Daniel Carrijo, assistant professor and extension specialist in grain crop production in the Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences. “We know that growth regulators can mitigate lodging risk and improve grain yield, but farmers and some of our stakeholders wanted to know their influence on straw yield and quality. This was a very applied project in which we tested a commonly used product called trinexapac-ethyl to determine how it affects straw yield and quality, which also is important on mixed-use farms.”