wheat

The fungal diseases called wheat rust "have the capacity to turn a healthy-looking crop, only weeks away from harvest, into nothing more than a tangle of yellow leaves or black stems and shriveled grains at harvest," says the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

Thanks to a generally favorable growing season, wheat growers in the European Union reaped a record 160 million tonnes of the grain in 2015, part of a record-setting harvest worldwide.

Researchers at Clemson University "have begun the process of restoring a nearly extinct variety of wheat that traces its American roots to the 1700s," says Southeast Farm Press.

Nearly half of the world's wheat-growing land is sown with varieties developed by an international network of plant scientists, or their national partners, says a report by the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. Adoption of the new varieties has been particularly brisk since 2010, "which may be due to the introduction of rust-resistance varieties in recent years," says the study.

In its first Crop Progress report of the year, the USDA rated 59 percent of the winter wheat crop in good or excellent condition, 15 points higher than a year ago.

"Concerns are mounting over freeze damage to winter wheat crops in the southern Plains," says the Associated Press, pointing in particular to temperatures as low as the single digits in southern Kansas 10 days ago.

David Hodson, senior scientist with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), sat down with FERN editor-in-chief Sam Fromartz in Washington to discuss the re-emergence of rust disease, a virulent fungal pathogen that attacks wheat plants and causes devastating crop losses, especially in poorer countries.

Wheat farmers around the world are forecast to reap a crop of 723 million tonnes this year, down 10 million tonnes, or 1.4 percent, from the record harvest of 2015, said the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in its first forecast of 2016 crops.

Much of central and southern Texas is abnormally dry following unusually warm weather and two months of scanty rainfall, reports the Drought Monitor.

Growers reduced winter wheat plantings 7 percent for this year, but that's just the first step toward harvest, says economist Darrel Good of U-Illinois. The crop will be determined by how much of the land is harvested and by yields, writes Good at farmdoc daily.

U.S. farmers planted the smallest amount of land to winter wheat since 2010, the government said, based on an annual survey of growers. Sowings of 36.6 million acres were down 7 percent from the previous crop and this is the third year in a row of smaller plantings.

Researchers may complete a sequencing of the notoriously complex genome of bread wheat in two years, rather than the four or five years that was expected, says Country Guide.

Wheat, the dominant crop of the Great Plains, is losing the race for higher yields -- and returns to the grower -- to corn and soybeans.

Ravi Singh, a world expert in wheat, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in recognition of his work on wheat genetics, pathology and breeding, says the international research center where he works. The awards will be announced formally in the journal Science at the end of this week.