ALBERTA – Dr. Brian Beres, Senior Research Scientist at the Agriculture and Agi-Food Canada’s Lethbridge Research Centre, spoke at the fourth annual Nutrient Management webinar series on Jan. 27.
Beres projects have seeded as early as Feb. 9 with no negative impacts to yield, in fact he has seen nothing but benefit.
He discussed his analysis on Heat and Drought Stress to protect and preserve yield in a changing climate.
“Basically, we're telling producers to abandon seeding by calendar dates and strictly go by soil temperature no matter when that happens,” said Beres.
This concept is outside of conventional thinking of when a farmer would get out into the field to seed.
Beres started a study in 2015 to test and prove the theory that seeding can happen as early as February.
Starting seeding earlier moves the critical growth period forward and reduces the impacts of the heat and drought through July and August on the growing process.
When they first got started, they didn’t know the optimum temperature to seed. Beres explained that they got a soil temperature probe and as soon as the soil was at zero degrees they started to seed.
They planted on Feb. 16 on the first project and went up by two degrees increments in later projects.
Fifty sites of data showed that a producer could plant after the soil temperature reaches zero degrees, but the optimum soil temperature is two degrees.
“We're not saying you're going to get a great yield bump with this practice but you're going to get greater yield stability, and you'll never lose out on yield,” said Beres.
With starting early the project was harvesting August 1 and the high heat temperature days were not hitting the crops during the critical growth stage.
Beres recommends with spring wheat 400 seeds per square meter or 40 seeds per square foot.
They have had a lot of success with uptake of growers and their experience is seldom a negative outcome.
The projects were completed all over Alberta as far north as Dawson Creek.
A producer in Saskatchewan planted his spring wheat when there were still snowbanks in the trees and it ended up being his best crop ever.
Weather can be a concern with snow and cold weather after seeding but the projects did not experience an issue with even April snowstorms on the condition of the plants.
The results still produced higher yields.
Beres said by seeding at a conventional time using lower plant population versus seeding at zero to three degrees with the higher seeding rate had negative profitability.
About 200 dollars a hectare was left on the table according to project results.
Beres has started another project with winter wheat in a nitrogen management and greenhouse gas context.
Weather forecasts show that the number of high heat and drought days will increase in the years to come.
Producers looking for the best yields means looking at alternate seeding methods in combating those conditions.
Beres offered two more pearls of wisdom. In nitrogen management, all at planting is beneficial. In dry land situation with spring wheat, there is rarely any sort of improvement beyond the rate of 120kg of nitrogen.
The second point was that it has been proven canola can go as deep as an inch and a quarter whereas that would have been heresy a few years ago.
Matthew Wells, Rural Extension Specialist from Lethbridge County hosted the webinar.
This webinar is part of a three-part series where the videos will be available online after Feb. 26. on the Alberta Beef Producers website.
https://abpdaily.com/events/
