Working as a team, Steve Harrison and Noah Dewitt are moving the LSU AgCenter’s wheat breeding program in the right direction.

An example of their success is the release of the wheat variety LA19333, which was licensed this year.

“It is one of the top four lines in the USDA Uniform Southern Wheat Trials across 11 states,” Harrison said. “It averaged 83 bushels an acre and has a good test weight and has done especially well from Georgia to Texas.”

Harrison said the program is benefitting from technology that is cutting down on the time it takes to develop a variety. A “speed breeding” protocol allows breeders to grow two or three generations in one year, thus speeding up the timeline for developing new varieties.

The AgCenter small grains breeding program continues to play an integral part in the SunGrains program, which is an agreement with seven southeastern universities to improve the efficiency of small grain variety research. A summer SunGrains nursery in Montana of crosses made in the spring greenhouse saves a year in the breeding cycle.

Oat development is another focus of the breeding program. It has released an oat variety that will be grown in both Brazil and Uruguay as a forage crop. Harrison expects to release another variety within the next year that will be used primarily for deer food plots.

Harrison is undertaking work with a group of scientists from Texas and Mexico examining the development of oat varieties for oat milk production.

Harrison is excited about the program’s work with triticale, a hybrid of wheat.

“Rye naturally suppresses weeds and is easy to plant, but seed is expensive,” Harrison said. “Triticale is an affordable option with lower seed cost and has potential to be used as a cover crop or food plot.”

There are three regional nurseries throughout the South where work in this area is being conducted: Chase, Louisiana; Plains, Georgia; and Quincy, Florida.

“I expect we will have a release in the next two years as a cover crop,” Harrison said. “At Ben Hur and Winnsboro, we had yields up to 90 bushels with triticale compared to 40 bushels with rye.”

Wheat acres across Louisiana have been relatively low for two reasons: low prices and several years of disease pressure, primarily from scab. Because of the low acreage, many chemical companies are not investing in any fungicide trials across the state.

Trey Price, an AgCenter plant pathologist at the Macon Ridge Research Station in Winnsboro, said there is little growers can do to prevent scab.

“The best thing to do is plant resistant varieties,” Price said. “Growers typically will spray at flowering as another layer of protection, but it is not going to rid the field of disease, especially if disease pressure is high.”

Another factor to consider for growers considering planting wheat is what crop preceded it.

“We are growing a lot of corn in the northeast, and corn is also a host for the pathogen that helps spread the disease,” Price said. “Because of the large corn acres, disease is going to be an annual issue for wheat.”

Fortunately for corn growers, disease pressure on corn has been light across the state. Like wheat, many farmers will put out a fungicide application when corn is near tasseling, but they may not be getting a return on that application because it may not be necessary.

“If a producer is clean at the R2 stage, they should be OK at that point,” Price said.