Yesterday, we posted our first hollow stem (FHS) results from Chickasha. None of the varieties had reached FHS, but as I cautioned in that post, those measurements were collected under a simulated grazing scenario based on the way forage data was collected from that trial.

Listed below is the first set of FHS measurements from our Stillwater location (Table 1). These measurements were collected from plots that were not grazed. The point of reference I gave yesterday was approximately 50% of the varieties reach or pass FHS by March 1 at Stillwater under normal conditions. From the results below, 30 of the 62 wheat varieties examined have just reached FHS. Compared to the point of reference, that is about 12 days ahead of schedule.

On February 10, we checked several of the known ‘early’ varieties (e.g., Billings, Gallagher) at Stillwater, and little to no hollow stem was present at the time. Therefore, we thought we would be safe with taking measurements in the middle to latter part of the week. Well, the warm temperatures over that weekend and the rainfall we received at Stillwater earlier this week provided great growing conditions. As a result, about half of the wheat varieties reached FHS. I suspect that we missed being on the front side of the 1.5 cm threshold by about a day or two for a lot of these varieties that have reached FHS. Our next round of measurements from Stillwater will come early next week.

Table 1. First hollow stem (FHS) results by variety collected on 2/17/17 at Stillwater. Plots were sown on 9/13/16. The threshold target for FHS is 1.5 cm (approximately the diameter of a dime). The amount of hollow stem for each variety represents the average of ten measurements. Varieties that have reached FHS are highlighted in red.