Drill Strip Variety trial yields results

Legion, ORCF 102 and Stephens came out as top yielders in this year’s Umatilla County Variety Drill Strip Trial. Goetze came out at the bottom of the list even in the blend with Skiles as Skiles was also near the bottom of the list this year. Goetze has the potential for winter injury and that is the most likely culprit for this year’s low performance as stripe rust was not a problem for the variety.

Legion, an AgriPro tall semi dwarf variety release in 2008, was the top yielder this year. It has medium maturity and good straw strength. This is the first year I have had Legion in the drill strip trials and so I have little experience with it, but literature describes it as a variety suitable for higher production areas of Washington and northeastern Oregon. It had very little stripe rust present when we evaluated the trial on June 25th.

Tubbs 06, which has been a good performer at this site, dropped due to a high incidence of stripe rust and the well known lack of effectiveness of high-temperature adult-plant resistance (HTAP). The failure of warm temperatures to materialize this past spring played havoc on varieties like Tubbs that are dependent on HTAP. For additional information and pictures on the level of stripe rust in the trial, I have posted a PDF on www.cerealcentral.com that shows strip rust pictures and stripe rust severity ratings of each variety in the trial. ORCF 101, and ORCF 102 along with Stephens continue to be strong performers even under these unusual conditions.

Remember as you plan your seeding activities this fall, that season-to-season variations in weather and the lack of an effective crystal ball, make variety selection challenging. I recommend looking over the variety information that I have included in the newsletter, and adding this year’s result into the mix, recognizing that this past spring we were setting or nearly setting new records for rainfall and low temperatures.

An option is to use mixes of two varieties as a means of minimizing the risks, or one could planting different fields to different varieties to spread the risk.

Additional variety trial information from across Oregon and Washington on available on my website, and they are updated as soon as new or revised information becomes available.My variety drill strip trial is for demonstration purposes and as such gives us an opportunity to see newer varieties under field growing conditions on a larger scale that the typical small plot research trials. It is only one strip per variety and is not replicated. Check out www.cerealcentral.com for more complete results.