Chloride's Role in Maximizing Wheat Variety Performance
To understand the interactions of major wheat varieties with chloride fertilization, and evaluate effects of chloride fertilization on wheat plant pathology, plant maturity and thousand kernel weight. Also to increase awareness of dealers and growers of the affects of appropriate chloride fertilization on wheat yield and profitability.
IPNI-1995-CAN-MB8
01 Mar 2000
1999 Annual Interpretive Summary
Wheat Cultivar Response to Chloride Fertilizer (Multi-Regional Project), 1999
Understanding the genetic variability in spring wheat cultivar response to Cl fertilization will be of great importance to farmers attempting to optimize crop yield response to fertilizer additions. As part of a Great Plains project evaluating winter and spring wheat variety responses to Cl, spring wheat cultivars common to western Canada were evaluated on two soil types over four years near Brandon, Manitoba.
Averaged across the 15 spring wheat varieties, the Cl fertilization provided a 2 bu/A yield response. The variability in the data was recorded across both the sandy loam and clay loam soil types, among years, and among cultivars. While soil Cl levels were determined as low to moderate, the sandy loam soils provided a more consistent response to pre-plant band applications of Cl fertilizer (3.3 bu/A vs 1.3 bu/A for clay loam). The high yielding Canada Prairie spring white wheat cultivar Karma provided the largest yield response, averaging 7 bu/A over the study. The hard red wheat cultivar AC Barrie, currently grown on 70 percent of all wheat acres in western Canada, showed a 7 bu/A yield response on the sandy loam soil, but a minor (1.3 bu/A) yield reduction on the clay loam soil. It would appear that those cultivars with the highest yield expression were most likely to respond to Cl, and that the sandy loam soil was more likely to be the responsive site. The influence of Cl application on plant disease rating was minimal at most of the trial sites and years. While disease suppression with Cl was noted in certain trials and cultivars, it did not correlate well with grain yield increases. While the lack of consistency in the results makes crop responses difficult to predict, there were some trends in the data collected in both Canada and the U.S. Great Plains. Soil Cl levels below 30 lb/A are a good indication of a need for added Cl, and plant tissue Cl that was 0.10 to 0.12 percent at the late-boot to heading phase indicates a crop responsive situation. Chloride is an essential nutrient for crop growth, development, and yield formation. This research has provided the basis to assist farmers in identifying those situations where the addition of Cl will optimize wheat grain yield. MB-08