Kentucky Small Grain Growers Association

Kentucky Small Grain News

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First 2018 UK Wheat Field School March 1

 After a successful first year, we are pleased to announce the next series of trainings of the 2018 Wheat Field School at the University of Kentucky Research and Education Center (UKREC). This program is possible through the partnership and support of the Kentucky Small Grain Growers Association. 

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EventsJennifer Elwell
Research Report: Looking for Old and New Foes to Prevent BYDV Transmission on Wheat

This objectives of this project were to monitor the abundance of aphid species and viruses in the fall 2016 and spring 2017 in research plots of Princeton; survey for presence of new invasive Sipha maydis in several regions of Western KY, and collect samples for virus detection; and to evaluate insecticide treatments for aphid management and BYDV’s percentages in treatments.

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ResearchJennifer ElwellBYDV
Research Report: Improvement and Development of Barley for Use in Feed, Malt, and Fuel

The Virginia Tech barley-breeding program is the largest and until recently was the only remaining public program in the eastern United States. The barley program is significantly diverse with breeding efforts focused on the development of superior, widely adapted, high yielding winter barley cultivars and a major focus on the incorporation of value-added traits geared towards the development of new markets.

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ResearchJennifer Elwell
Dissolving the Soil Fragipan could Grow Kentucky Farmer Income by $0.5 Billion Annually

With these limited results, it appears that it might be possible to increase yields of corn and soybeans by 25% on the fragipan soils by using an annual ryegrass cover crop.  We also expect to improve the yields of wheat.  A 25% increase would result in $500,000,000 in increased returns to Kentucky producers per year or $5,000,000,000 over a 10-year period on the 1.5 million acres of cropable fragipan soils in Kentucky.  

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ResearchJennifer Elwell
Fall 2017 Wheat Planting Decision

Kentucky grain farmers are harvesting corn and are getting to the point where they will decide if and how much wheat they will plant this fall.  The main changes this year are a modest increase in wheat prices, a small increase in soybean prices, and a slight decrease in nitrogen prices.  These changes will make planting wheat more attractive relative to last year.  The following analysis attempts to quantify the extent of the relative change in profitability for 2017.  The analysis includes estimated returns comparing double-cropped wheat/soybeans with full-season soybeans for the 2018 crop, and the likely implications for Kentucky grain farmers. 

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MarketingJennifer Elwell
Millers and Processors Should Like the 2017/18 Soft Red Winter Crop

U.S. farmers produced lower volumes of a very good SRW crop for marketing year 2017/18. This SRW crop has uniformly low dockage, good test weight, somewhat lower protein, very good kernel size and weight, low DON values and no notable pockets of low falling number. Flour extraction rate is somewhat lower than last year. That is a good summary of results from USW’s 2017 SRW Quality Survey Report, now posted online at www.uswheat.org/cropQuality.

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MarketingJennifer Elwell