Expert Tips To Get The Most From Irrigated Wheat

Irrigated wheat is grown by many South African grain farmers in rotation with summer grains such as maize and soya bean. André du Toit, a senior wheat breeder with Pannar Seed SA, shares his knowledge and experience on how farmers can maximise the productivity, and therefore profitability, of these wheat crops. Lloyd Phillips reports.

- Lloyd Phillips

With the wide range of wheat cultivars now available to South African farmers, it can be bewildering to select and grow seed that is best suited for a particular farming business’s production conditions and goals. Fortunately for wheat farmers, experts such as André du Toit, senior wheat breeder with Pannar SA, are keen to offer guidance on cultivar selection and production management.

Du Toit says important factors that wheat growers should consider in their selection of appropriate cultivars include the number of days from planting to flowering; plant height at harvesting; stem standability as the plants and their grain mature; tolerance to pre-harvest sprouting; and tolerance to stripe rust, leaf rust, stem rust, white rust and fusarium head blight.

FROM THE OLD TO THE NEW

An attractive aspect of Pannar’s many modern wheat cultivars is, for example, that they require lower seeding rates to achieve the same, or even greater, grain yields than older cultivars, says Du Toit.

Some of the company’s latest cultivars can be planted at 75kg of seed per hectare for early plantings in June, and at up to 110kg/ha for later plantings in July. This typically results in a germination density of 175 to 250 plants/m2.

“Until as recently as two years ago, most of South Africa’s wheat seed companies and growers aimed to achieve germination of at least 250 plants/m2. However, about 15 years ago, Pannar began research to develop irrigated wheat cultivars based on dryland wheat production principles that required significantly lower seeding rates.

“We wanted to find and breed irrigated wheat germplasm that is better adapted to local production conditions, and so can be planted at lower seeding rates but still have high yield potential,” Du Toit explains.