Along with all of the corn and soybean trials that I have been scouting, maintaining, and documenting, we have several wheat trials in the mix. This past week we harvested our last wheat plot in the area- Pulaski, NY- and compared the varieties. I’ve never had much experience with wheat in general let alone harvesting it, so this was a new experience for me.

The excitement started out as soon as I arrived; they needed my truck battery to run the weigh wagon since it had suddenly been drained. After pulling my battery and getting the wagon running, we got out all of our equipment for measuring the test weight and moisture and a spreadsheet that calculated the tons per acre. Once we got all set up, the harvester went to work, carefully harvesting one row at a time and then dumping the load in the wagon to be tested and weighed before transferred to the truck. I had the opportunity to watch all of the testing take place for the first variety before jumping in and helping.

Fixing the wagon prior to harvest

Retrieving a sample to be tested

We had two different measuring instruments that gave us the moisture of the wheat of individual samples and then an average of three samples. In addition to moisture and test weight, we recorded the length of the wheat section that was planted and the weight the wagon displayed. On the pre-made spreadsheet, there was already a function that produced the tons per acre given the information we recorded and entered.

In this trial, we only had seven varieties of wheat, whereas most corn and bean plots have upwards of twenty. We had a range of tons per acre between 74 and 88, which for the field they were planted on was very impressive. The soil had been rock hard with little to no moisture for quite a long time and the wheat harvested around the plot had ranged from 26 to 120 tons per acre. We found that the lowest yielding variety was Cornell’s Erie wheat and the highest was Seedway’s 550.

Unfortunately this will be the only plot I will have had the opportunity to harvest, but it was definitely a unique and exciting experience.

Harvesting the wheat trial