Farm Progress

Northeast Texas and Blacklands only bright spot.Drought, other problems plague Texas wheat.

February 20, 2013

2 Min Read
<p> Wheat conditions are not good across most of Texas. Some pretty good wheat does exist to the north and east of the Metroplex.</p>

Despite recent rains that greened up much of the wheat crop, a Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service agronomist is expecting a below-normal crop this year.

“There were lots of troubles with stand establishment and drought through the fall and winter,” said Dr. Travis Miller, AgriLife Extension agronomist and Texas A&M University soil and crop sciences associate department head. “Stands are skimpy and weak.”

In parts of the state wheat does look good, Miller said, but big parts of the Rolling Plains and the western/northern parts of the High Plains may not make a crop.

North and east of Dallas, it’s a different story, he said.

“From the Metroplex north and east, it looks like a pretty darn good crop,” he said. “There was some segregation, by which I mean part of the stand coming up in November and part coming up in January. But overall, that’s the best looking wheat in the state, northern Blacklands, northeast part of the state.”

For other areas, the future of wheat depends upon the future of rains.

The projections are for above–normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation for the spring, with chances for either above- or below-average summer precipitation a coin flip, Miller said.

“For the temperatures, it’s not a coin flip, and higher temperatures mean there will be need for above-average precipitation because of higher evapotranspiration rates,” he said.

In the South Plains, there was a “substantial acreage” of wheat planted because of the high grain prices, said Dr. Calvin Trostle, AgriLife Extension agronomist in Lubbock.

There’s also a lot of acres planted with wheat purely for a cover crop to prevent wind erosion, and despite light planting rates, some producers have decided to try for grain harvest.

“I looked at one of those fields that a farmer wanted to take for grain and wondered whether to increase irrigation and topdress (with nitrogen),” Trostle said. “He had a good wheat variety, the planting date was decent in mid-November, it had already tillered a little bit, and I said, ‘yes, I don’t think your yield potential is down that much.’

“That gives you a picture of how much folks would like to take a wheat crop to grain,” Trostle said.

There are a lot of other considerations that have to be made, such as available irrigation water, and, of course, future rains, Trostle said.

But a lot of wheat in his area is “just hanging on,” and needs a good rain.

“You can have wheat that doesn’t look very good, but we can pick up a rain in March and then again in April and be very surprised at how productive it can be,” Trostle said.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, about 75 percent of the state remained under severe to extreme drought.

More information on the current Texas drought and wildfire alerts can be found on the AgriLife Extension Agricultural Drought Task Force website at http://agrilife.tamu.edu/drought/.

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