Welcome to the 2021 Arkansas Rice Field Day at the Rice Research
and Extension Center near Stuttgart,
presented by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. I'm
Jarrod Hardke, Rice, extension agronomist for the Division of Agriculture.
This year, we're presenting the field day virtually and happy
to have everyone in attendance.
We've got a great program lined up for you today covering a wide range of topics,
including weed science with Jason Norsworthy and Tommy Butts, entomology
with Nick Bateman, disease and pathology with Yeshi Wamish,
fertility with Trent Roberts, irrigation with Chris Henry,
and our breeding program with Xueyan Sha and Christian De Guzman.
So I'd like to do a brief overview of the 2021 season.
Certainly has been a struggle similar to that of the previous couple of years.
Once again, characterized by a very wet early spring
where growers have struggled to get the crop in this year.
We were able to make a little better progress
than we were in the 19 and 20 seasons.
Luckily, it was still slow, but it really kind of was a middle of the pack type
progress compared to the recent 10 years in terms of our planting progress.
The rainfall did help us in some ways.
We saw a great deal of activity out of our pre-emergence herbicide application.
So our weed control has arguably been very good.
However, once we got to the pre-flood fertilizer timing
windows, we did run into some difficulty with those rainy windows.
So we gave and we took in in various capacities throughout the season.
Really, the cool weather continued all the way into June.
Unfortunately, through that time, especially in the very early part of June,
the east central and southeastern portions of the state experienced severe
flooding events, which caused major problems for all
crops in the region, including rice — though it tolerates a flood,
sometimes it doesn't tolerate that deep of a flood.
And we did lose some acres
as a result of that and did struggle with management, levee loss and repair
due to those issues, again, across a pretty wide range of acres in that region.
We also experienced a very large fall armyworm outbreak, the largest seen
in certainly in any kind of recent memory and have had to deal with with that past
to somewhat unprecedented levels in rice this year.
But throughout all those struggles, we are finally reaching
the point where the majority of rice is at the heading stage.
And we actually do finally have now the first rice fields in the state
have been drained really here just in the last week or so.
So ultimately, the end is in sight at this point.
Certainly the crop is never done, even though we have reached this point
in time. We do have to still fight our typical stinkbug battle,
make it to draining, ultimately harvest.
The upside is the crop does look very good despite those early struggles.
And so the attitude is generally positive.
Our overall acreage expectation, while it is down
from the previous year — that was expected —
there's still some debate on
exactly how many total acres we we were able to achieve.
And certainly we did lose and fail some acres associated with the rainfall
and ultimately flooding events.
But again, most growers do seem very happy with where
we are in the year and pretty excited to get combines in the field.
So with that, I would like to once again thank everyone for attending
the virtual rice field day here in 2021.
The majority of the content and the research
that we're going to discuss and talk about today is funded, at least in part,
by the Arkansas Rice Research and Promotion Board,
which is arrived at through grower checkoff funds.
So thank you to our producers for your continued support.
I would also like to certainly thank my crew.
While I'm not speaking about my research today on agronomics,
all of that variety performance work and other agronomic data that we collect,
including planting date, seeding rates and even furrow irrigated rice,
which you're certainly going
to hear more about today, it wouldn't be possible without my crew.
And again, the support of the Arkansas rice growers.
We hope you enjoy the field day.