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Illinois wheat growers optimistic about ’25 crop

A small grains breeder at the University of Illinois says results from this year’s Illinois Wheat Association annual winter wheat tour are encouraging.

“No news is good news.  We didn’t really see anything out of the ordinary.”

Dr. Jessica Rutkoski says despite weather challenges the tour of roughly 20 southern Illinois counties shows a relatively healthy crop.

“We came up with a 106 bushel per acre prediction, which we probably overestimate to some degree, but overall, everything looked good.”  She says, “I mean, I didn’t really see hardly any diseases. It looked like everything came up pretty well.”

She tells Brownfield the projection would mean record production for the state, but there’s still a lot of time left in the growing season.

“Like last year, when we did the tour, we also saw really great conditions and assumed a normal kernel weight.”  She says, “But when you have diseases like scab, that’s gonna bring the kernel weight down. So, there’s still that variable left.”

Rutkoski says nearly all the fields surveyed appeared to have been sprayed with fungicide, so even if cool, wet conditions that favor head scab development persist, the wheat crop should be better protected.  She says the extent of disease pressure should be better known in the next two weeks.

AUDIO: Dr. Jessica Rutkoski – University of Illinois