Colin Marshall is an area marketing representative with Richardson Pioneer in Balgonie, Sask.
John gave me a call mid-May from his home near Lipton, Sask. He’s got 4,000 acres there, mainly wheat, canola, oats and peas.
John was concerned with the emergence of his wheat crop, which he’d seeded just under two weeks before he gave us a call.
Only 11 days after seeding, John’s confidence in his wheat crop was already slipping. A low plant count had him concerned and he was certain, given his seeding rate, that he should be seeing a whole lot more young healthy plants than he was.
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Emergence was poor, growth was slow and, he said, the plant stand minimal. When I asked what he thought the problem was, John said, “Well, you’d think it was fertilizer burn to the seed.”
John said he’s reviewed the rates, machine settings and so forth and had eliminated fertilizer burn to the seed. He’d put some into the seed row, but well within recommended levels, so there should be no reason for seedling mortality due to fertilizer placement. That was enough to raise my curiosity. We made arrangements for a field visit.
Sure enough, when John drove us out to the field, the wheat stand was really thin. On top of that, the seed row was quite patchy. At this point, it looked like John was right on the money thinking it was a fertilizer problem, so just to be safe I double-checked his assessment of his fertilizer applications.
When I spread out the seedbed utilization chart on the hood of the truck and did some calculations, it certainly seemed John had used a safe fertilizer-to-seed ratio of 80-20-05 on his wheat. Barring a major equipment malfunction — which John assured me there was no evidence of — it would seem that we’d completely eliminated the most likely suspect.
Back to square one. We headed back into the field and pulled up a few plants in the seed row. Shaking the dirt loose, John looked at me and nodded glumly. We’d clearly found the problem.
Plain as day, we were looking at a bare seed and root system. Some of the seeds were shrivelled and chalky-white in colour. No doubt, this was a fusarium-related problem that had either come into the field on the seed, or infected the seed in the soil.
How could John have prevented this early-season fusarium infestation that was taking down his wheat stand?
Send your suggestions to COUNTRY GUIDE, 1666 Dublin Avenue, Winnipeg, Man. R3H 0H1; e-mail [email protected];or fax 204-947-9136 c/o Krista Simonson. Correct answers will be pooled and one winner will be drawn for a chance to win a COUNTRY GUIDE cap and a one-year subscription to the magazine. The best answer, along with the reasoning which solved the mystery, will appear in the next Crop Advisor’s Solution File.
