ONTARIO GRAIN FARMER 19 AGRONOMY The perfect time to plan ahead for this year, is now! Early seed booking and preparing equipment this summer can make all the difference in the fall. Connect with a retailer to plan ahead for KWS Hybrid Rye seeding this season. www.kws.com/ca “As plant breeders or geneticists, we make populations and discover where those genes are,” says Helen Booker, an associate professor at the University of Guelph, adding that it’s a slow, deliberate process. “We are using a population derived from a cross of FHB-resistant Canadian spring wheat and elite winter wheat lines to map genetic regions in a winter wheat background that condition resistance.” To further aid in plant breeding, part of McConachie's work uses the app to estimate incidence and disease severity, helping breeders and researchers measure a trait’s fusarium resistance, as merit criteria for registration testing. It’s providing more objective data and greater transparency around FHB resistance, along with resistance to deoxynivalenol (DON) accumulation in the grain. “As part of his master’s work using these single head images, he was able to use a spectral index to estimate disease within the head,” says Booker, one of McConachie’s supervisors, along with John Sulik. “He’s upping that to the plot level in his PhD, because in the field, we’re looking at hundreds or thousands of individuals.” RAISING THE BAR Adding value to the app is its availability to growers, who can perform their own head counts to help with yield estimates. Where the FHB image captures have a limited window (shortly after flowering), growers can use the app after heading and before maturity, as long as the heads are visible. Growers will also be able to make better-informed decisions using the FHB assessment for in-season adjustments, like combining infected fields first or increasing fan speeds to blow out infected kernels. It would also be a benefit for longer-term management practices, assessing wheat stands one year and carrying those lessons to the next. Joanna Follings, cereals specialist with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Agribusiness (OMAFA), had help from McConachie with the 2025 Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) initiative. The trends they’ve noticed with YEN show high-yielding producers have more than 800 heads/m2. “Those producers had an average of 143 bu./ac., and this would give them an idea of whether they’re hitting that target to achieve high yields,” says Follings. “It could be more valuable in helping them with decisions the following year, comparing fields and head counts, and looking at the differences between the management strategies they use, particularly planting dates.” Planting date is one aspect that has a significant influence on head counts, where planting within an optimum window can help reach that target of 800 heads/m2. Growers can also address other management strategies, including nitrogen rates. “It’s not a tool that’s going to give you all the answers, but it’ll provide you with insights of what worked well this season and maybe what you can improve on,” adds Follings. McConachie stresses the head count and yield estimates are not guarantees on what a grower will harvest. The final numbers still depend on possible infections in a field, lodging or random weather events. In using the app to assess FHB, he notes it’s a little more challenging given the bleaching effect of the disease: once the crop reaches maturity, a bleached head looks the same as a mature head. But another advantage is the app’s cost- and time-efficiency; a grower can get FHB estimates in minutes rather than spending an hour or two scouting a field. NEXT STEPS With ongoing use, WheatScanR will be updated as new methodologies and features are added. There is a limit on the number of pictures that can be saved within the app, but it’s still a powerful indication of what’s possible and what’s coming in the future. •
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