Check Your Small Grain Growth Stage For Management Decisions

- Hi, my name is Paul Esker I'm the extension Field Crops Plant Pathologist at Penn State with Penn State Extension.

And today I wanna walk you through some of the growth stages we are seeing in our small grain plots around the state.

This is a very important time as when as the weather as it warms up can induce a lot of rapid growth which will influence our decision making.

The samples I'm gonna show you today come from our Southeast Research Farm in Lancaster County.

These samples were collected on April 21st, and represent spelt, winter wheat and barley.

I'm gonna use them to kinda give you an idea of the differences in the growth stages we are seeing because they're all a slightly different phase at the moment which would to influence some of the decision making processes.

What I wanna also emphasize is that for the most part what we're seeing with our spelt and our winter wheat is very similar to what we saw just with samples collected around that same date that our Rock Springs Research Farm.

So first, I'm gonna start with spelt because it is the youngest in terms of the growth right now.

And we've got some samples here to show you and I'll kinda you through we're looking at relative to the current growth and development at this phase.

If you look here, we have split samples in there fairly consistent, I think in what we saw in the field.

But what I really wanna emphasize here are some critical things we're looking for.

As you can see here with this specific example, you can see some of the root mass into the crown tissue.

So we know where approximately the soil line is.

Right now what we're looking for is any sort of evidence of the nodes being formed, so that first leaf kinda coming out of the soil line, and that's where the first note will be formed.

It helps us look for the growing spelt head in this situation.

And what I'm gonna point out here is that we can actually make out in several of these examples, the growing point for where that head is relative to the soil line.

Here's one example, here's another.

The reason this is important is once that wheat head or the small grain head in this case spelt is out of the ground, we have to be very careful in terms of our product selection for things like herbicides.

And so I recommend that you look closely at things like the Agronomy Guide from Penn State Extension, as an indicator and also pay attention to the labels of any of the products you're going to apply.

By definition for what we're seeing here because the node is starting to form, although it's not easily identified by touch, I would call this Feekes growth stage five.

So the pseudostem is erect in a elongation there, so we've got an upright plant.

That's very critical as we move through.

The next set of examples I'm gonna use are from our winter wheat plots.

And we've got various studies going on at the Southeast farm, and also at our research farm at Rock Springs.

Weather variety testing, and also federally funded projects from the US, Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative.

And so these provide a sample information look at some of the variation of being seen from around there at the moment.

And what I'm doing here is just spreading out some of these cut examples for you because again, it is all about identifying where we are at in terms of the growth stage at the moment.

And so again, you can see, so the crown tissue, that of the red mass soil line up.

What we're now looking for is any further development that we're not seeing in our spelt examples to identify different growth stages.

In particular here, what I'm gonna start to do is run my fingers across that plant.

And I actually can, here, and I'll try to bring that up for a close up, I can make out the first node forming here and that's really critical that way.

It's an indicator for us to start to look for the growing point for the head.

And actually, if you make that out here from the node up, you can make up the growing head.

It'll also give you indicators here about approximately how many further nodes will come out.

What's important to note with most of our small grains is that we often see four nodes in a fully elongated plant.

So this is useful for us to start to identify the further growth stages, especially when it comes to what might be subsequent decisions that would be made going forward.

So with just a single node and all of these are showing the same thing, again, I can run my fingers accordingly.

And we wanna make out there where that head is, it is above that first node.

So by definition, this would be Feekes growth stage six, in these examples here.

I also wanna emphasize here with this and I'm gonna pull in a different sort of approach to looking at these wheat plants.

We can see here different bunches accordingly and so small clumps if you will, because again, wheat produce as a primary tiller and secondary tillers accordingly.

We often are working with that primary tiller to do some of our growth stage identification.

This is really important to what we're trying to do for understanding this growth and development.

And again, in a population of small grain plants we have to be very sure that what we're seeing is more than 50% of the plants or 50% of greater of the plants showing that same growth stage.

For the most part here, this is a reliable growth indicator for what we are seeing.

Moving along with that idea here, and I'm gonna try to make sure this is visible for everybody.

We have our barley plots.

Barley is a bit further along at the southeast Research Farm than it is at Rock Springs.

But again, following the same sort of principles, we're gonna look at this in a couple different ways.

To do this, I have a dissected plant here because what it's really showing is some of the critical growth and development that we're expecting.

You can see here we have the first node coming out, the secondary node, the head is in between pushing out, you can actually see it's fairly well formed.

We would have a third node fourth node combination at this point still to come, and it's at that fourth node where we start to see evidence of flag leaf formation.

And so, the growth and development here is a lot further along, actually.

And looking at the barley plants, we're seeing a lot of Feekes eight to Feekes nine growth stage.

The Feekes nine growth stage, which is flag leaf emergence, typically as it's described, you can see the legulo so that leaf roll is coming back into play accordingly.

And you can make that out and that's usually the leaf that erect and upright and very easy to see as you walk into the field.

But this is very important because often times this has been a critical growth stage for fungicide decision making for things like powdery mildew and septoria.

For the most part, also in our barley, this is an indicator for us to be prepared as this plant progresses through over the next couple weeks for head emergence because that's when we're focused on fuser and headlight prediction.

Again, this is really critical because if we take some different examples just to illustrate what we're seeing here in terms of the structure of the plant, you can make out again nodal points kinda running your fingers up the plant to where the head is.

But you can see here different forms for how that flag leaf is starting to come out.

And so our growth and development here is a bit further along than it is for other small grain, which means their decision making right now changes a little bit over the next couple weeks.

If our weather warms, and as many of you know here in the Northeast, we've actually been kinda cool and damp, I think that slow down the progress.

But if we get a warming trend here, drier weather, we could be pushing through these growth stages fairly quickly in all of our small grains.

And so understanding the growth and development is really critical.

What we wanted to walk you through are some of the key critical aspects of how you look at the plant, how you dissect the plant to make that growth stage decision.

If you have any questions, we recommend consulting the Agronomy Guide, there's a good visual indicator of growth and development or feel free to contact myself as part of Penn State Extension or any of our extension educators.

Thank you.