Temperatures drop into the danger zone for (US) wheat crop Apr. 5, 2007
By MIKE CORN
Hays Daily News
Mother Nature might have been teasing about the onset of spring, but she sure wasn’t kidding when it came to winter-like conditions overnight when temperatures dipped into the danger zone for wheat.
The question now is how much damage did the cold weather do to the region’s wheat crop?
To make matters worse, it’s a crop that is generally considered excellent because of ideal moisture conditions.
The ultimate answer won’t be known for 10 days to two weeks, according to wheat breeder Joe Martin at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center south of Hays.
This morning, Martin openly worried about the wheat, what with the temperatures falling to 24 degrees — a single degree below the danger threshold.
What worries him more, however, is that temperatures are expected to dip into the teens over the weekend, on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. Both nights, temperatures are expected to drop to about 15 degrees, well below the danger zone.
That could spell disaster for wheat, and over a big area of the state, even dipping down into Oklahoma.
“I think it’s really big,” Martin said of the area that could be affected by the freezing temperatures. You’ve got the breadbasket in it. I would be looking for Cheyenne County to be the wheat producer of the year. They may be late enough to miss all this.”
Already, people are talking about freeze conditions in 1997, but Martin said that was mostly confined to southern Kansas and Oklahoma.
For this area, the last really big freeze came on Mother’s Day in 1981.
Some areas of the state had enough snow to protect the crop. Although the Natoma area was apparently covered, most of the heavier snow is in a small area in the central part of the state.
“I went out and looked at our nursery, and I could see the ground,” Martin said, “which was not what I wanted to see.”
Prior to the onset of the cold weather, Martin voiced concern about the welfare of the crop.
“I’m scared,” he said Thursday afternoon at the research center’s greenhouse. “Certainly the temperature they’re talking about is serious.”
It’s serious because the head of the wheat plant is currently anywhere from 2 to 4 inches above ground level, depending on the wheat variety.
Overly, he said, the state’s most popular wheat variety likely is about 3 inches above ground.
That is a recipe for a disaster, especially when temperatures drop into the 20s and lower.
Twenty-five degrees is probably the dividing line for wheat: above that mark, the wheat can survive with only minimal damage.
“But once you go below 25 degrees, without question there will be damage,” Martin said.
Then it will be a question about how much damage the cold temperatures caused. Tillers on the wheat plants could be damaged and as a result might not produce grain.
What makes the crop so vulnerable to the cold temperatures is that it is ahead of normal, by a week to two weeks, Martin said.
“At one time I thought we were going to have a normal crop, but then it can on fast,” he said.
