It is still hot and dry across much of Minnesota. Weather records are being broken. The first six months of this year have been the second driest at the Northwest Research & Outreach Center since record-keeping began in 1890. Only 1980 was drier.

Needless to say, scouts did not find much of anything in the wheat this past week. They found the oddball plant with symptoms of BYDV, loose smut, or wheat stem maggot. They did not find Fusarium head blight or any of the other economically important diseases. Aphids meanwhile are leaving those fields where the crop is approaching physiological maturity. It appears that only grasshoppers are not vacating the premises just yet.

I expect the first winter wheat and rye fields to get harvested sooner rather than later in the southern half of the state. I will be visiting the on-farm trial locations in the first half of next week and will report my findings in the final update next week.

--Jochum Wiersma, Small Grains Specialist, University of Minnesota