 Hello, this is Joel Ransom, extension agronomist for Seale Crops. I'm housed in the plant science department at NDSU. I've been asked to give an update on small grain varieties. Before I go into the details of selecting a new variety, I want to talk a bit about the weather this year. Because we're all aware that this spring started out to be cooler and wet and caused delay in planting. I think probably on average we're about two weeks later than normal in planting. For reference in my discussions, I'm going to use the first of May as a planting date. I think ideally if we could plant before that, that would be more optimal for yield potential development for small grains because of the preference that they have for a cool weather. I think rainfall has been more or less adequate. We have certainly had periods where it was dry and the surface of the soil has been dry. But I think if we look at the overall period between first of May and now, there's probably been adequate moisture and hasn't been a lot of moisture stress on developing small grain crops. I think temperature is the bigger story. On average, actually from the first of May to the first of July, we're more or less normal. But averages don't tell the whole story and in fact this graph that shows the daily average temperatures at Prosper, which would be the end-on's location closest to Castleton, you can see that after the middle of May that more often than not the temperatures have been above normal. I think any temperatures below 70 degrees are not harmful or not negatively impacting the development of the small grain crop. But we can see that there are probably about two weeks worth of daily weather that was suboptimal for yield potential development. In fact, if we look at the crop, this is from a plot near Castleton. You can see that even at heading is about a foot shorter than normal. Often get a question of the short stature means short yield and the answer is there's no direct correlation between height and yield. But certainly if there's been stress that has caused, and I think the stress in this case would have been heat stress, has caused the plant to be short, it's possible that some of the yield components were equally affected. In fact, if we look a little closer at this plot, we can see that it hasn't filled in real well, probably indicating that tillers have not developed fully. Even though this poor covering might have been associated with less than optimum stand establishment, but if we pull out a few plants, you can see that there are some tillers that did not develop, suggesting that their conditions were not ideal for vegetative development. But look at spike size. The spike size actually wasn't too different than normal. And so I think that there is the potential to certainly fill these spikes and maybe add some additional kernels than we'd normally get in a spike if conditions are favorable from now until the end of grain filling. Now, as was mentioned, I was to give you some thoughts about bridal selection. And it's really variety, environment and management are determining factors for yield and we can't control the environment. And if we're using best practices, then a variety becomes really key to the success of a small grain production enterprise. How do we select a variety, given the fact that we have so many of them? In fact, in our spring wheat variety trials, we have about 50 entries every year. And of those 50, I think we have 18 that are new, that were either not tested last year or the first time tested last year or the first time tested this year. Since environment is so critical, and the question would be, how do we select a variety that's going to perform well in the environment that we're not even sure what it's going to be like? And I think the answer to that is that we use as much data as possible that includes multiple environments and multiple years in order to select varieties that are going to be stable across a whole range of environments. So the recommendation would be use the mains over multiple locations in your selection process for yield. And certainly if multiple years are available, multiple years with multiple locations are going to be even more powerful than just multiple locations. And avoid making a selection based on one year's data in one location, even if that location is nearest your farm. Don't forget the importance of lodging. We maintain in our publications information about the lodging potential of the varieties that are released that are at least that we're testing. These publications are available either online or through the hard copy in our selection guide. Also, don't forget the importance of disease resistance. Bacterial leaf streak was a big problem last year, and this is a disease that can't be controlled by fungicide. So really the only tool we have is to control it with varietal or genetic resistance. And this is an aerial view of one of our experiments last year, and you can see these brown plots. This is not because they're earlier in maturing, but actually because they've been decimated by bacterial leaf streak. And I think in this location that the more susceptible varieties yielded about 20 bushels less than those that had some moderate level of resistance. So even though we don't have complete resistance in any of the varieties, I would recommend that in any variety that you select, given the prevalence of bacterial leaf streak that you avoid using a variety that is considered susceptible. This is just another picture of bacterial leaf streak and the incredible impact that it had on some of the more susceptible varieties last year. And finally, don't forget the importance of protein. Given a lot of discussion or weight to the importance of looking at yield and looking at yield over multiple locations, protein often will impact the price that is obtained at the elevator. We haven't had significant discounts or premiums in the last few years, but that doesn't mean that it won't be an issue in the future. And I think that we have seen that those varieties that are kind of above average for protein and above average for yield tend to be the ones that are the most profitable produce year after year when compared with a variety that might have high yield potential but very low protein content. And we feel this is so important that we've added a feature to our Rital Selection Tool, an online Rital Selection Tool that has a little option to calculate gross value. And it does give the user the opportunity to input a price for the bushel at the market as well as an anticipated premium or discount. So with that, thanks for joining in. I wish I was able to see you face to face and wish that I was actually out in the field rather than sitting in my home making this presentation. I would conclude by saying that there are lots of good options for varieties in springweeds but more than we ever have. And they do offer some significant advantages. I don't think there's one variety that is going to have all of the characteristics that you want, but I think with the data that is available and being produced by these different research extension centers and here by the main campus that you can be guided in choosing a variety that will work well for you and be profitable for your enterprise. Let's hope the remainder of the season is favorable for your development. Thank you for joining.