Finding Better Tools to Assess Spring Stand Quality in Wheat: Making Tiller Counts a Thing of the Past.

In Ohio, soft red winter wheat production has decreased during the past 25 years. Producers are seeing less value in the crop, and cite lack of consistent grain quality and yield as two of the greatest challenges for profitability. The objective was to find alternatives to tiller counts for quantifying spring stand quality for winter wheat. During the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 growing season, we evaluated four wheat varieties of differing yield potential (‘Croplan W210110R’, ‘Steyer STex 141’, ‘Wellman W304’, and ‘Malabar’) planted at four seeding rates (0.75, 1.0, 2.0, and 2.5 million seeds/acre). The study was conducted at two locations: Wood County and Clark County, Ohio. A similar study was conducted at two on-farm locations in Crawford and Pickaway counties, where seeding rate was the only applied treatment. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at Feekes 5 and 6, percent canopy cover at Feekes 5 and 6, and head counts were compared to the currently recommended spring stand assessment of tiller counts at Feekes 5. Of these measurements, percent canopy cover was only recorded at the on-farm locations. By omparing MSE, it was found that NDVI at both Feekes 5 and 6 was a better assessment than tiller counts at Feekes 5, and percent canopy cover at Feekes 5 was comparable to tiller counts at this stage. This research will provide more accurate, updated methods that are tailored to Ohio’s production environment.