Small Grain Growth and Development in Central Pennsylvania: Fields are Getting Closer to Anthesis

- Hi, my name is Paul Esker, and I'm the Extension field crops plant pathologist with Penn State Extension.

In this video, we're just gonna talk about the current growth stages in our small grains, focusing in particular on our barley and our winter wheat.

This is again a critical growth stage to consider for various management applications.

And this follows from our previous video in which we saw that the growth stage was variable starting from jointing, moving into about Feekes six to seven depending on the crop.

One of the things I do want to note and how we've looked at the growth stage is we've taken samples within the past week from our Rock Springs and our Southeast Research Farms.

Again, I'm focusing here on samples from Rock Springs, in particular in barley.

Because down at our Southeast Research Station, we've actually seen our barley in many of our trials move into heading.

And so we've made our last applications, in some respects, for Fusarium head scab control there, And what this means is that we again see variation across the state.

And we know as we go further north, again we have to pay attention to where the growth and development is at, as it will most likely be further behind.

We're recording this going into a weekend in which the overnight temperatures are expected to be in the upper 20s to low 30s for what is really about the first May 8th, May 9th period.

That's very cold.

That's something we're paying attention to in all our crops.

And again, we'll see how that impacts sort of pushing through some of these growth stages over the next seven to 10 days.

So what I have here are three specimens from barley, and I'm gonna pick up one just so we can kinda have a look at what we're seeing here.

This was sampled just two days ago at our Rock Springs Research Farm, and I think this is really representative of our wheat as well, although it's a little shorter in stature and there's varietal differences.

But we are seeing fairly consistent growth stages at this moment.

What's most critical here, and I'm gonna drop this one down and kinda explain that, we can definitely we identified two nodes right now.

And if you look and recall from our previous video, you can make out the head as much further up into the plant canopy or into the stem, excuse me, in that respect.

What we focus on here is now we're getting ready in the barley to see when those heads will first appear.

Because for our scab control and management-type programs, we're really interested in understanding when to make the best application.

I expect this to occur with, probably in the early part of next week, mid to late next week potentially because of the weather.

So we'll be paying attention to that.

But to help identify the growth stage, we also need to pay attention to where the flag leaf is.

And these dissected samples, you can actually sort of make out that flag leaf.

To identify the growth stage here, so we know the head is past the second node.

We can make out where the new nodes are also gonna come as that head pushes out.

But if you look here, the flag leaf, and many of these examples are rather large in terms of height, but they're still fairly rolled up.

We haven't done anything to affect these.

So we can't see the ligule very clearly as of yet.

And so by definition, I would classify this probably closer to the Feekes eight growth stage than maybe Feekes nine.

But again, under the right conditions, this would push out fairly quickly, and then we'd be watching as the boot stage forms, which is critical for us to watch for head emergence in barley.

And our winter wheat, we're seeing actually much the same thing, although the weight stature varies by variety, and I think in some respects it's a little shorter statured than maybe we're seeing in the barley at the moment.

So to summarize all of this, right now our barley in some parts of the state, maybe not down in the south-central, southeast area where it's pushing through, is pushing into that Feekes nine, so full flag, getting into that more full flag leaf emergence growth stage, which is very critical to start to think about the decision-making process.

Our winter wheat is actually moving along very similarly, but our weather conditions are something we're gonna monitor.

And so we'll be keeping you up to date over the next several days as we continue to get out in the field and scout.

Thank you.