 I'm Ann Ongstead and someone that helps me with paperwork because I'm very bad with paperwork said why do you do serigrants? And Matthew, would you stand up for me? I do it because even though I'm getting old, other people are still growing organic crops and I do it for the next generations. My name is Steve Zwinger and I'm part of the Farm Breeder Club and also an employee at the NDSU Carrington Research Extension Center. Okay, so basically why did we work with buckwheat? Why do we use buckwheat? Well, it's a very important crop particularly for sustainable organic agriculture and because of some of its unique attributes, particularly how it mellows the soil, makes a nice texture to it, it releases phosphorus making our soils are loaded with phosphorus that's not available and buckwheat is one of the unique crops that is able to extract this insoluble phosphorus and make it available to the plant. So that's really a very positive aspect particularly since there are not many crops that are like that. Basically it's so competitive that it smothers weeds so it's an excellent smother crop, it grows very fast and usually weeds are never an issue with this particular crop and it protects the soil as we use it for a cover crop and other things. Especially since we can plant it in the warm part of the year and get that soil covered up and protected. So it's very important that way and also particularly from the marketing standpoint buckwheat is an important crop, the whole worldwide the acreage is small but it's still an important crop and we don't eat it as much in the United States as other countries do but we market and grow this as a human food and then also we can be growing this as a seed crop which again I think is an important aspect of this whole thing and that's partially what we're looking for in this project. And again I think there are a couple of points that I really feel are strong about buckwheat that we really need to consider particularly for the future of agriculture. There's not a lot, we're losing, I mean you can't help but notice nowadays in so many areas we're talking pollinators, you know NRCS, everybody's talking pollinators. Very important, we know that. Well I think buckwheat is one of our crops because it flowers basically thirty days after you plant it up until you freeze it, if the frost comes or you swat it. And so we have this long flower window which is an excellent habitat for our pollinators and I think that's a really important aspect and also again the cover crop use because we can plant this, get some fast growth, turn it under and possibly even seed another cover crop within that year. So I mean I think it has a lot of aspects with that in the cover crop. Probably one of the more unique aspects of buckwheat is there are very few varieties, very few breeding programs, particularly public breeding programs there are none. And we really have a lack of varieties particularly in North America and so we're really looking at varieties that came out of breeding programs in Canada that are you know thirty years old and so we have not seen any new development with varieties and stuff like that. And what we do have for newly developed varieties which there are some going on which is really a remnants of the same breeding programs, they're proprietary lines meaning the companies that you sign a contract with the market provide the seed and you have to sell all that seed back to them. So therefore access to these new varieties is limited unless you are going to form a contract with these particular companies. And so it's really hard to you know have access to new varieties again and limited varieties and so that can pose obviously a problem for farmers and agriculture. So really this is what the project is about then is to look at some new varieties of buckwheat particularly they come out of Ukraine or the Russian varieties from that breeding program and we want to look at these, the object was to look at these varieties and compare them to the characteristics of the varieties we're growing and see how they do in terms of research trials and comparing them and then increase some of the seed and hopefully make the seed available to farmers if it does, if these varieties look like they'll perform. So and one of the things that's unique about these varieties is that as we all know buckwheat as I said will flower for long periods basically they're indeterminate plants meaning they'll keep flowering until it's either the frost or you cut them. These newer buckwheat varieties that they're developing are more indeterminate meaning they will have a shorter or more concise flowering and ripening periods and we did see that that they are short you know they won't flower as a longer time period and have more uniform set. But with that goes other characteristics like they probably don't get as tall, don't produce as much leaf area and such and so there are positive and negative attributes in that and that's what we really want to look at and compare these varieties. So this was a farmer rancher grant and we had three farmers involved in this along with some researchers and and and outreach on it. So the farmers Ann Ongsiddish you met her was was the project leader on this and she's at Robinson and Rick Mitleider which is about you know 30, 40 miles away from Ann's farm and at Tappant and Wayne Mitleider we're also project partners on this as farmers. We did look at trying to get some regional you know data on this not just in North Dakota so we we combined with other researchers Carmen Fernholz at the University of Minnesota, Pat Carr at at Dickinson and we had a site at the Carrington that would be me, Steve's Winger and then also we went out to with Kevin Murphy at Washington State University who is starting some to do some breeding work in in buckwheat and quinoa and other crops and then the outreach component Teresa Podall and Frank Kutka from the Farm Breeder Club were working on the outreach portion and assisting in that so we kind of had a you know a wide array of people involved in this project. So basically it was a two-year project this was the timeline. In 2013 we received very small amounts of seed of each one of these varieties and and basically what we had to do then was increase those before we could even get to the variety trials so the first year was to increase these two varieties in isolation and then also have a field tour for awareness and spreading what we're doing so then we increased some of the seed in 2013 what happened we come down to 2014 again had a field tour we did variety trials at multiple locations everything doesn't always work out the way you want and that's what we're starting to learn which is okay so we didn't get as quite all the locations we wanted we picked up some other ones sometimes it was miscommunication in case of Carmen he was uh under the understanding that this was going to be field scale and so then when we told him no we only have a pound of seed you know it didn't work out because it does take specialized equipment to do this kind of work so we were not able to get a Minnesota site and the guy sending the seed myself missed sending seed to Pat so we lost that site but we did get um we did get Kevin had a couple sites out in Washington we had three sites planted on each one of the farms a couple sites up at Carrington and then also we did get one other Bert Johnson at down in in Fargo planted planted a trial too so we did get a you know a number of locations what we needed to do then also again was you know we did have enough seed to get into the trials but the idea was then to take the seed that we increased and go further so that we could you know get up enough seeds that a farmer could plant it with large-scale equipment and then the object would be then after we would increase that seed to distribute the seed to make it available to farmers that was what the outline of the project was okay the varieties um I don't know how many you read Russian I don't um but I really frankly these slides these two slides for me and it was pretty good and I think I really appreciate that because I don't always pronounce words right I don't even say Frank's name right sometimes but I like the way he did this then I finally can say it I used to I called it dick you'll but it's de queue all right de cool that was that was one of the varieties that's the Russian obviously but that's the one variety deviatka did I say it right all right so I guess that that kind of helps us there so those are the two variety names obviously they are Russian so here's what we did in 2000 turn 2013 the we the deviatka increase was on Ann's farm planted here we only had 600 grams a seed that's like a pound and a half so what we were able to do this is our little drill these are seven inch rows and the drill does um seven rows usually we put the winter wheat down there in the middle so we can help divide them in between the way we have to do it and so basically we planted three of these strips 100 feet long and um this was again on Ann's farm we sold we sold them on June 12th it was swathed on August 27th and then harvested on the 3rd of September from those 600 grams we got 55 pounds a seed which I thought that was pretty good the interesting thing about it is um I also had some small grain plots on the same location and we were we went down one week to combine the first set and yeah looked at the buckwheat oh it's really flowering got a ways to go went down the next week and I should have brought I don't really have a swath or I use a jerry mower to cut it which is still like a swath or so I should have couldn't believe it within one week it was done flowering it was ready to cut already and I just never saw buckwheat mature so fast like that and so then we obviously had to go home make another trip down and cut that buckwheat and uh and again so we harvested that everything really went good I mean that's a pretty that's not a very long time period and I and I said that was a lot of seed that was pretty high quality very little clean out so it was all good heavy test weight seed the dick you'll increase we did at ricks farm we had actually a thousand grams of seed there so we had a 300 foot strip again we sold them the same day we'll swath a little later not necessarily I can't make a good handle if it was because of that variety is later in maturity or not but it was a different field but this one um as Frank says I think we hit three of the seven plagues on this one um it was it was it was uh basically it was a droughty year so we had very little growth then hail came and then there wasn't a whole lot left but the plants were still growing in the grasshoppers came in so it really got hit with everything but we looked at that and just thought we had to harvest it so basically we went out and found whatever plants we could cut them took them home dried them on a tarp and then um shelled them out just to you have some seed to keep this project going so basically we we showed a thousand grams and came back with 700 so you know we don't want that to happen too often saves on the trucking but so we did didn't have a good experience with that but we did have some seed okay Kevin Murphy again what we did you know it was very small amounts we looked at as him of being part of the project in another environment we sent him like 50 grams of the seed for a backup increase and he increased those in 2013 so that he you know had a little bit more seed to plant in the plots and stuff like that so um we were kind of successful there on I don't know the exact amounts we have not got all our information from Kevin yet but that's Kevin and he is actually um he is a wheat breeder I believe we've we've had him at our conference that's right and but what he's doing is he's seeing um as he says the writing on the wall and where it's going so he started looking at other things so he's breeding like quinoa um I think spelt am buckwheat you know and so looking at other crops which is great because like I said there is not really much for breeders in this particular crop so in 2013 this was the buckwheat trial up at the Carrington Center um and and Rick here we're presenting on that and was talking about the project and Rick um is is basically telling us the importance of buckwheat in his rotation and how it works because it's an important crop for him and uh and so we did we finished that year we had we had some seed it's a new year 2014 here we're seeding um the deviatka increase down at ricks remember we had 55 pounds of seed some of it went into variety trials we saved a little bit and we put the rest in the ground here we we sowed uh just about an acre of seed down there at ricks it was this was quite late when we seeded it because it was really really dry so we waited till it finally rained and we went into his cover crop field here is what it was and it was dist and again the soils are light and sandy so it was it was uh the soil was pretty loose and essentially what happened oh there's the seed so you'll notice this isn't dark seed like the newer buckwheat varieties we have um but it does have a good test weight this was a heavy test weight seed and so that that's that uh there are little drill that were seeding there but we did have we did have a failure we didn't get any seed off this and part of it was was because again um in the systems that where rick is doing this whether it's plowing or disking in this case he dist but generally there's always a packer well we didn't have a packer so the soil was fairly loose and also we're not using a drill like a press quite like a kershman press drill which would do a better job of not getting the big um trenches when you seed so when it was loose with this single with this single um press wheel we tend to get these you know divots like you you can all the time and i know when we seeded it we had uh you know the seed was just really shallow but we had it like this and i and we stood there and and uh i said god i don't know i don't like that and rick says well it always it's okay just as long as it doesn't rain hard guess what happened that night a five inch rain and so our seed that was one inch was now four inches deep and so essentially you know that was just one of the one of the things that didn't work so we lost all that seed we had a dick you'll increase because um remember now we had very little seed of that and this was only 400 grams sewn on this and actually um i sewed this on my farm um about a 200 foot strip seeded it fairly thin um but it was really interesting you know no comparison again you're not having the varieties beside each other so it's hard to compare but i have never seen buckwheat grow so fast as that did it was flowering by july 5th which was only 28 days and when it started flowering it was up to here in 30 days but guess what happened on july 22nd after it got this tall i had a storm come through and what happened is it just took and laid it all flat so these four foot plants are three and a half foot were you know over there so there was this really wide strip and i thought oh what's gonna happen now but it did it never stood back up but what happened is is you know how on plants lodge it started going back up so it actually looked like at september 3rd well i was going to swath it on september 4th it looked like a three foot buckwheat stand there was pretty good so they curved back up in that new growth and then you know so it was like this and yeah a hail storm come through and i'll have a cover crop next year and so we lost it all and so doesn't work out all the way we want everything so but we were this year we seeded variety trials on on a few number of farms so here we're down we're seeding this is on wane's place i believe right close to ricks but we're seeding our variety trial again with our specialized drill so that we can drop the individual packets in and they seed out so they can keep switching and again we had a field tour uh standing here in front of the buckwheat trial here's one of the varieties deviatka you can see well so a better picture of it but again rick is rick is talking about the importance of buckwheat and how it works on his farm so here is the variety trial at the kerrington site this is the organic variety trial um we'll go over some data and stuff here a little bit later but i just want to show you here you can see how much earlier flowering this one is and again for all of you that if you don't know how our variety trials work and stuff like that if you'll notice these are replicates and there's a gap in there that's why we need to drill the clean out on there but it's pretty easy to see here it is on that rep there it is there there it is there there it is there kind of sticks out when you got one like that doesn't it but you'll you'll you'll notice though how much earlier flowering that one was and and that you know synchronicity of that um in particular is compared to like say springfield there which is one of the later ones in the in the one next door and we'll go over some of that here but so here's the good part the data so this is the data from the variety trial this year this is the three three different locations make up these numbers so we had a three site average this is the days to bloom so if we look at this you know manner is probably the variety most of you are all planning if you're planning buckwheat um you may be planting maybe coma or koto but you know this is probably the variety that we're planning but if you look at that look at those flower periods um deviatka you can see there is right at 30 days as compared to you know like um horizon which is latest one you know six days later you know that doesn't seem like a lot but that's pretty big on buckwheat so we can see that there it's much earlier at flowering and and making a much more uniform set but again as i as i as i told you the idea and the in the development of these varieties is to make them so that they are um faster flowering and faster seed set but also have less less leaf area and and also not as tall so you can see that shows up here this is plant hythen hinges excuse me and you can see that they're they're the shortest varieties as in comparison there um test weight is an important factor in marketing your buckwheat and if we look at again we look at these now i'll use an example here manner is the old variety that is being planted the koto and coma are some newer varieties that mendak has the rights to and developed and the unique thing about this is is what they have done in their breeding work is they they have these varieties tend to be much darker seed and have a heavier test weights and you can see that shows up there you know there's some of the best particularly komo there is the highest test weight 47 pounds um but dev devyatka there does have a fairly decent test weight we can still see even though you know we have lighter colored seed we're still getting a better test weight than the variety that we're planning so that's an important character particularly for your marketing aspect heavier test weight means a bigger growth and that's what they want when they after they dehull that another factor that hasn't been looked at it as much but one of the things that we wanted to start doing is looking at the the kernel weight because test weight and kernel weight aren't always the same if you notice if we go back the heaviest test weights komo koto aren't necessarily having the largest kernel weight tkw means thousand kernel weight so that's the weight of a thousand seeds in grams but that that's enough just another another characteristic look at to determine how how heavy the seed is here's the part we're all interested in though the yield um there are not big differences as you can see um but the devyatka was basically the second lowest yielding not much really difference than komo but you know we we didn't quite get the yield and that's a lot of it obviously to do with its maturity you know where you just can't put it on i think the um the one thing that makes me feel pretty good once i look at this again if we look at our yields i mean really this is only 20 you know this is only 25 pounds different so the scale looks like but what makes you feel good is that at least the variety we're planting is still performing to the newer developed varieties such as ac springfield and horizon are a couple of newer lines that have been developed by a company called springfield mills in canada who will be buying buckwheat from some of you now this year because he told me he is going to start contracting with organic farmers here so that would be one access to some of those newer varieties so where do we go from here um what we don't have a lot of seed i mean we still have remnant seeds that we can increase but it's like starting over part of the grant the idea was once we produce the seed the grant would buy the seed so then that could be distributed to farmers well we don't have seed to sell but we have funds left and so what we're doing is we're looking at is there a way that maybe we could take some of these funds and go to the ukraine or russia and purchase seed so that we could be where we want so that's kind of where we're at right now with looking do we want to purchase some of this seed or do we continue increasing it and get back to where we were so that's really where we're at and what we what we uh what we want to do so this is why buckwheat is important when you look at you know when you look at it what it does in a field and in that effect in terms of no weeds we're getting this crop to um to to pull up phosphorus which is probably going to be our which is our most limiting nutrient in agriculture in the world right now there's only so much phosphorus so i think that's why that crop is so important you know and there is some um there is some evidence and it's on the early stages and this is actually work that's being done in in canada with springfield mills um to where they haven't had all the funds to continue working on us but they've been working it for a while they're actually finding on some of the buckwheat lines that um buckwheat helps with uh many of our current health problems the heart and other things like diabetes and stuff thank you and so um there may be some future if some of this work can be continued to look at how it actually buckwheat may have some excellent medicinal properties to help us with with some of our or health problems but i think no matter what in particular for the organic farmer buckwheat is a very important crop but yet with the limited a number of varieties this is why it's so important to do what we're doing i really believe that and to try to um find new new new varieties that will help us and that will will have seed that's open genetics that can be sold amongst farmers instead of having proprietary lines so that's where buckwheat is kind of unique and that's why i think this project is really important so that we can see that um because again you know looking at looking at look at all those flowers you know i mean i know i know david right here po doll has told me because he plants buckwheat all the time i believe you said your beekeeper likes to come into the buckwheat fields is that correct and so i mean it's really important i mean and also too i think when the more flowering plants we have in our farms in our environment then we create the habitat for more more pollinators and other things which then will benefit all our crops so having that you know diversity out there in that flowering that's so important and that's that's ann's farm here the whitman ranch and again buckwheat very important crop for her and with that i guess we can probably take a couple questions the question was was the yielder lower was the yield lower this year because the shortened flower period because of the weather conditions right that because of the weather conditions that shortened flowering um what i i don't know the answer to that but i know when we look at that what really surprised us and i know frank said the same thing when we took that when we were at field day there when we were looking at the deviotka that day when it was flowering this is it we thought this was so great but it probably was that shortened flower period now you say it because it probably didn't have enough to keep going because it kind of stopped where the other ones were still able to to go so your point is excellent there because i don't know that one of our advantages of buckwheat is that long flowering periods so to shorten that up is that exactly what i don't know but going back to the increase the year before an ann's farm which i wish i was watching it every day which i didn't you know how that goes i totally thought well this is the best thing in the world because it was so fast and it was so easy to determine when to swap it and not have any loss you know so there may be times depending upon how the weather goes that that might be advantageous to have that short period that's the reason i asked the question because it was looking at the other results on there it tells you that agronomically there was potential to raise more so is it the shortened flowering period or is it the weather in that short right right yep i think it could be both yes david i think one of the important things to assess as we assess these varieties more is keep temperature records because you know buckwheat is very sensitive to temperature and if the temperature gets above 90 the blossoms will blast and so are the Ukrainian varieties going to be more sensitive i mean is the plant going to compensate for whether it gets too hot and the flowers blast are they going to continue to flower or is a determinant plant is that going to be more harmful to them and i and i think the bottom line on this whole thing is that's why you need to look at multiple years to ever to determine a variety so we know we aren't totally there yet yes tressa again um i remember at the field day you and i talked about the advantages and disadvantages of determinant and indeterminate for exactly the reason that i think is time the the other with that particular with those determinant variety when do we actually need to plant i agree with that i think that would be very big right there with that we'll have to close and i thank you very much