By Gregory W. Roth
We have posted our 2016 winter wheat and barley performance data online. This data includes evaluations conducted at both our Rock Springs and Landisville research farms. Barley tests include feed (hulled and hulless) and malt barley varieties.
Wheat
We have posted data from our winter wheat performance tests conducted at our Rock Springs and Landisville research farms. This year we evaluated 62 winter wheat lines at each location. Details of our production practices are listed on the cultural practices tab on each spreadsheet.
Yields were good at our Landisville location and exceptional at the Rock Springs location this year. The Rock Springs location had a relatively wet May followed by a mostly dry and sunny June. Fall tillering was good at both locations. Spring tiller survival and head density seemed a bit higher at Rock Springs. We did not spray either site with a fungicide and head blight pressure was relatively low at both locations. At the Rock Springs location we collected heading date information as well, this might be valuable if you are looking for earlier wheat to facilitate double cropping.
Barley
We have also posted data from our winter barley performance tests conducted at our Rock Springs and Landisville research farms. This year we conducted a feed barley test of both hulled and hulless lines as well as a malting barley test at each location.
Feed Barley
At both locations feed barley yields were generally very good and lodging was generally low. Test weight tended to be good as well. This was likely due to good conditions for grain fill, a relatively dry June and timely harvest conditions. The tests include a number of experimental lines from Virginia Tech and these are not commercially available but they do give us some idea of varieties that might be in the pipeline.
Of the hulled barleys, Secretariat from Virginia Tech topped the combined test this year, followed by FS 950. Thoroughbred, a long time standard winter barley was down this year. It is susceptible to powdery mildew and conditions in May were favorable for this disease.
Of the commercial hulless barleys, Dan had the most consistent performance and tended to have higher yields than the newer variety Amaze 10. Yields in all of the hulless lines were slightly lower than expected this year.
Malting Barley
In our malting barley trial, we evaluated eight entries at the Rock Springs location and twelve at the Landisville location. These consisted of some commercial and experimental types. Of the ones tested, Wintmalt, Scala, SY Typee, Thoroughbred and Charles are the most commonly available in our state. These lines consisted of both 2 and 6 row types. Our main impression was that many of the malting were considerably shorter than the feed barley types, but had high yield potential, similar or greater than Thoroughbred. Two of the lines, Maja and Thoroughbred had moderate to severe powdery mildew. All of the lines in this trial were sprayed with Prosaro at head emergence to limit the Fusarium Head Blight.
In this test with 60 lb N/acre, lodging was minimal for most varieties at both sites. It is important to note that yield is only one characteristic in evaluating malting barley lines and we will be following up with a malting barley analysis which should be posted in the next few weeks. Some of these lines have also been evaluated in New York and these results are posted online. If you are interested in malting barley, you should check out our recently released Malting Barley factsheet.
Source:psu.edu