how a wheat plant grows is the subject to this video
the information presented with applied wheat production throughout the United
States and even the world
with a couple of minor exceptions first of all we will be discussing winter wheat
which requires Royals ation spring why
would not require that Runnels ation second we'll be discussing
I week wrong for both or age and for grain
this requires that the farmer plant earlier
using higher seeding rates and would expect to get more forage production in
the fall
then he would if they were growing the wheat for grain only so let's see how
wheat plant grows
every farmer hopes to have a nice looking wheat field like this
there's a lot that goes into producing a good crop of wheat
first of all there are many management decisions a farmer has to make and then
he has to depend on the weather to cooperate to particular events have
sparked my interest in developing this video
first of all many producers have had difficulty determining when
the wheat is in growth stage eight to nine which is the
time that's appropriate for application of the most popular foliar fungicide
that's being used in Oklahoma right now
and then second I've learned that many people have trouble determining
when the wheat plant has begun to join and it's important
for wheat producers to be able to identify when wheat begins to join
because it's at that time
that they need to make a decision on whether they're gonna pull cattle off
the wheat pasture
to get both maximum grazing potential
and maximum grain yield
many people think when they look at a wheat plant like this that
each one of these is a stem
and I can understand very well why they would think thats a stem but lets
see what we find if we take it apart so what i'm going to do is just take one
of these tillers
and I'm gonna cut it off here a little ways
so that we're basically simulating cutting it off
roughly at the soil surface the first thing we see is these outer
this outter leaf and actually that tiller was developing was just rolled around
the outside
what we thought might have been the stem we keep
going we'll see there's another leaf leaf sheath
and were wrapped around the outside move I don't break it off
we have another leaf
with its leaf sheath and then what we're left with is the youngest leaf
that was just developing
and if im lucky we can pull this part all the way down
you see that there's nothing else inside all it is is a
leaf that hasn't fully expanded yet
thats rolled up so all we had inside what looks like a stem
was a bunch of leaves and leaf sheaths that were wrapped up inside each other
this is the base of that we call the stem we found that was just leaves and leaf
sheaths rolled up
and if we go on down the only party that it's truly a stem
would be right down here at the very base all of the leaves
that were in this are attached down here at what we call
the crown earlier we're looking at the whole plant and
at that point there are several nodes that are all packed
right on top of each other within about an eighth of an inch
and that's the only part of the stem that there is with the wheat even
and so the wheat begins joining leaves and tillers are systematically number
on the main stem of this plant
we have one leaf here leaf two
over here going back to the opposite side we have leaf three
leaf four and leaf five
and the sixth leaf is approximately four times as long as the fifth leaf
so we conclude that this mainstem
has 5.4 leaves on it here we have
a tiller from the leaf axle the firstly we call it
t1 and then we have a second tiller growing from the prophyll
of the original tiller and that's called T 10
and is a secondary tiller
on the opposite side where leaf two was
we have a tiller and and the actual leaf number two
called t2 and if we look carefully we can see a tiller
from the actual leaf three that's called T3 so now in this plant
thats
5.4 leaves we have three primary tiller and one secondary tiller
there's a particular time frame in which each tiller develops
and if that tiller doesn't develop
during that time frame then it won't ever appear
for example if there's a lot of drought stress at the time that a particular
tillers supposed to developed
that stress may prevent the tiller from from growing out
it aborts and that tiller never appears on that palnt next we'll see an example
of a plant that's been growing under stress here we're looking at two wheat
seedlings that are about the same age
but they've been growing under different circumstances so that
with one of them the smaller one obviously growing under more stress and
distressful conditions
then the larger one what I'd like to point out is
some the differences between them first differences you see is obviously the leaves
on the big one are a little bit longer
and probably a little wider also but then there are other differences that
are pretty important
if we look closer at this bigger plant
we have the the first tiller that developed on the plant
over on this side came out of this leaf axle
and then on the opposite side the plant we have the second
the second leaf over here and the tiller
that emerged from that leaf axle
then we have the third leaf
right here and the tiller that came from its leaf axle
and four fifth and the sixth leaf developing up here
the important thing is that each one of these initial
first leaves have a tiller in their leaf axle
thats partially the reason why this plant is bigger
than our other one you if we look closely now at
that the one thats smaller that's been grown under stressful conditions
this is the first leaf right here and if we look down
there's no tiller
that came out and that leaf axle second leaf
over here
and again there's no tiller that came out of the leaf axle of that second leaf
and finally we have the third leaf here
with a small tiller that just emerged a few days ago
from that leaf axle and then we had the fourth fifth
and sixth leaves on this plant
so the big one of the big differences between these plants is
when we grow the wheat under stressful conditions
the tillers will never develop and that reduces the size to the total plant
considerably
we planted in late August and Oklahoma
can have as many as 11 leaves produced and the main stem
before it goes into the dormant phase in December
this plant may also have as many as 15 to 20 possibly even thirty tillers
produced by the time it goes into that dormant phase
even if we planted at sixty to ninety pounds per acre
now we'll look at a plant that has is
several tiller's on it we've got approximately 1
2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 and 13 tillers
there may be more than that but I see at least 13 tillers on that plant
this plant is was planted
August 28 and we're taking these pictures on
October 7 so it's about a five week old point
winter wheat requires a cold treatment before the growing going to change for better data
when it's producing new leaves to reach production
when it's producing the floor of structures borough initiation usually
began shortly after
growth commences in the winter by the time
soil initiations completed the maximum potential number kernels has
been determined
before initiation and early joining stage as a bro
overlap during the late of soil initiation
initiation is completed about the time that the first node can be detected
above the soil surface
it begins as we first see a hollow stem
above the crown and then it ends as we go into the boat stage
before we dig up a plant to show you what
how to tell when jointing for starts I wanna contrast my definition of jointing
with what I think many the farmers believe jointing is
well when farmers start thinking about jointing
frequently their looking for a bump in the stem thats caused by
a joint or a Node and if we
try to look here close-up we can see way down here near
just a couple inches above the soil surface
a bump on this damn would which represents a node
and that would be a situation that the farmers might consider
wheat that's already started to joint what we wanna do here's what to look for
one in the the biggest stems that was a
originally produced last fall this particular set it's pretty obvious that
this is the biggest one
we just pull it out and separate it out
I like to tear away all the garbage at the bottom it does so I can see what I'm
looking at
okay
okay so i cut off the roots now what I want to do is cut straight up through
the middle of what looks like a stem here
we have a real sharp knife this works good
once we've cut some these stems open to look for the growing point
will find something like what we're showing here we've got three different
stages we'd like to show
the first one we have the
the growing point right about here and you'll notice that their
at this point there are several dark green bands that are pretty close
together they represent several the nodes
that have not expanded yet and then right below that there's an area pile of
Stems
just about a in this particular case a maybe
three-eighths of an inch another node and then a full inch of hollow stem
in and has we show when we're cutting on the roots are attached
right down here at the bottom so this is a plant
if the crown is approximately three-quarters of an inch below the soil
surface
we would say that this the head which is located right in here
is just slightly above the soil surface at this time
and certainly by this time if we're grazing cattle
if we're interested maximum grain yields we need to have gotten them off
remove the one thats just a
little bit less mature we have a situation like this again the ground the
roots were attached right here at the base we have just a tiny bit of hollow
stem here
and we have our cross pans with the nodes that are packed close together
in the head would be located right in here and you'll notice here a few
if you cut a little bit more or if you try to unravel it what all we've got about this would
be leaves rolled up inside each other
and that much you get up I know if you see those leaves that are rolled up you know
that the the heads gotta be below that point this would be what I would call the
earliest stage
jointing but we're just seeing a very very small amount of power stem in this
in my opinion is the ideal time to be thinking about whether
when I'm gonna take the cattle off and it usually takes
approximately one week to go from this stage
to the previous stage we showed where they had would be at ground level are
slightly above
and then this final one is one where we have no
development no elongation yet
the roots are right here the these are just leaves that are rolled up inside each other
here
and the growing point some place right in here its this is so small it's
difficult to see
but again it only takes a few days to go from this point
to the point where we have a little bit hollow stem in there
so here we see the three different stages
one hasn't started joinitng one is just barely started
and one that's moved along far enough that
if we're grazing and wanna get grain yields off we should have had the cattle
operating
this is a plant that we cut off
just above the root system as we have been doing in the past so the root
system would have been located just below this point
the hollow stem is pointed out
this in here we've got one node here and then as we zoom in even closer
we can see that the the head is located right about in here
now this is a plant that's looks like it's about 15 inches tall when you walk
in the field
but here the head is only located about three to four inches above the soil
surface
and in our neck shot will show you what the head looks like close-up
the head at this point
is just extremely premature flowers
that don't even look like flowers yet but just bumps and those will ultimately
develop and we'll get the
the grains and the lawmen paley and the ovary in amperes developed in
at the same time that the
head is developing we also have additional root growth the stem
starts elongating and we get additional leaves
this may result in competition between the different parts of the plant
and sometimes the results and several other tillers
slopping often and not continuing to grow
therefore in a wheat plant we may have as many as 10 to 15 tillers
but yet ultimately we'd only get four to five heads
that are formed because several those tillers have
have died back sometime during that time