Editor's Note: U.S. wheat farmers entered the National Wheat Yield Contest in record numbers in 2024. DTN is featuring details about the fields and farmers and their winning entries in several profiles. Today, we present the Bin Buster winner in the dryland spring wheat category.
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When you win a yield contest, everyone wants the recipe for the secret sauce. Nick Pfaff will respond that there is one special ingredient.
"You can do a lot to a field to try to make it yield, but it all comes down to rainfall," said Pfaff.
The 26-year-old Bismark, North Dakota, farmer saw that play out this year as he took home top honors in the dryland spring wheat category of the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest with Croplan 3099A, a hard red spring awnless variety that yielded 117.60 bushels per acre (bpa).
Now in its ninth year, the yield contest organized by the National Wheat Foundation (NWF) is designed to encourage wheat growers to strive for high yield, quality and profit while trying new and innovative management strategies. DTN/Progressive Farmer is the official media outlet of the competition.
Pfaff applied the same processes and the same inputs to the same variety in several other wheat fields in 2024. The winning field received 22.3 inches of precipitation during the season. "Fields that received more in the 20-inch rainfall range were about 15 bushels off of this field," he said.
With fields scattered over 75 miles, Pfaff expects some weather diversity. This year, the rains tended to be heavy in the spring, light in June and shut off in July and August. Those areas that received closer to 28 inches of rain outyielded his winning entry, but he had preselected this field without knowing where those rains might fall.
THE RECIPE
On average, Pfaff spread 100 pounds to 180 pounds of urea per acre in a variable-rate application ahead of planting. He followed up with 80 pounds of starter (12-36-6 plus 5 pounds of sulfur) while drilling in 7.5-inch spacings on April 25. The crop followed soybeans and was seeded at 120 pounds per acre with a target population of 1.4 million plants per acre.
A fertility booster of 10 gallons per acre of 28% liquid nitrogen (30 pounds N/acre) was applied when the wheat was at about 10-inches tall, which Pfaff refers to as the "2 1/2 pop can" stage.
"I've got all these weird little measurements that make sense to me," he noted. "If our wheat gets too big, we've seen evidence of sprayer track injury in harvest yield. So, I like to limit passes as much as possible."
A routine fungicide treatment was used to protect against fusarium head blight and other diseases. The 2023 crop season provided proof that fungicide is a good investment. Pfaff ran out of fungicide on the last pass in the field and decided to leave it as a test strip. "The whole field average was running 80 to 90 bushels, and that strip yielded around 30 bushels. It was telling," he said.
In general, beardless (also known as awnless) varieties can be more susceptible to disease. "The upside is the awnless wheat has a longer maturity (92 days) and gives us a longer harvest window. This variety is extremely durable wheat and holds up to wind and weather," he said.
The offset is the increase in stalk strength and the volume of material generated, which requires combines to slow to 3 to 3.5 mph, compared to 4 to 6 mph for other varieties. Grain moisture can also influence harvest speed. The heads of awnless wheat are also larger, Pfaff noted.
"In some cases, we were down to 2 mph this year, and we're running [John Deere] X9s. They say those machines can run through anything. I promise you, awnless wheat slows them down," he said.
PROTEIN BOOSTER
"We really like this wheat for its high yield potential, but it is lower in protein," Pfaff added. Most of the nitrogen used by wheat for grain protein is taken up before heading or flowering and moved to the developing kernel during grain fill. However, the nutrient can still be taken up during and after heading, and it tends to be dedicated to the grain's protein because yield potential has been determined already, he observed.
To increase protein, Pfaff applied another 30 pounds of N per acre (10 gallons of UAN plus 10 gallons of water) post-anthesis (flowering) before the wheat berry started to become milky. The winning contest field measured 12.8% protein.
Weed control ranks high on the must-manage list for Pfaff. It starts with eliminating volunteer wheat in early fall to avoid a green bridge that attracts the wheat curl mites that carry wheat streak mosaic virus. Glyphosate remains an important tool for controlling that volunteer wheat, he noted.
Pfaff's father, Kent, landed first-place honors in the spring wheat dryland category in 2016 with a yield of 104.29 bpa. This emphasis on yield has helped guide the young farmer's practices and keeps him striving to improve. But he also believes picking the right contest field remains part of the equation in this region of central North Dakota along the upper Missouri River.
"Fields closer to the river are more nutrient dense and are almost always guaranteed to yield better -- no matter the rainfall received," he noted. "Since the farm is geographically spread out, I think about harvest logistics and try to place seed varieties with good durability against lodging in those northern fields."
Awnless wheat can sometimes be more susceptible to deer damage. However, Pfaff said several years ago, bluetongue virus wiped out a large percentage of the deer population and has reduced the problem.
The contest is a great learning tool, Pfaff noted. "I'm focused on yields, but I'm also putting an emphasis on return on each input. We need yield, but it must make sense," he said.
Winners in the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest Spring Wheat Dryland Category include:
Bin Buster: Nick Pfaff
Bismarck, North Dakota
Variety: Croplan 3099A
Yield: 117.60 bpa
First Place: John Wesolowski
Warren, Minnesota
Variety: WestBred WB9590
Yield: 114.93 bpa
Second Place: Dale Flikkema
Bozeman, Montana
Variety: WestBred WB9668
Yield: 113.74 bpa
Third Place: Bruce & Helle Ruddenklau
Amity, Oregon
Variety: WestBred WB9668
Yield: 106.95 bpa
More on the 2024 National Wheat Yield Contest can be found here: https://www.dtnpf.com/…
To see profiles of other winners:
"Irrigated Spring Wheat Winner," https://www.dtnpf.com/…
For more information on the yield contest and to view past winners, go to: https://www.wheatcontest.org/…
Pamela Smith can be reached at pamela.smith@dtn.com
Follow her on social platform X @PamSmithDTN
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