Assessment of Winter Barley in Minnesota: Relationships among Cultivar, Fall Seeding Date, Winter Survival, and Grain Yield

Abstract

No planting date from early September to mid-October consistently resulted in maximum winter survival.• Two key environmental variables, fall growing degree days and snow cover at or below -4°F contributed to winter survival.• The cultivar McGregor had the highest winter survival and grain yield among the cultivars tested.• Winter survival was positively associated with grain yield.• Additional research and breeding for winter hardiness will be needed to improve winter survival and grain yield. AbstractWinter barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is currently being developed as a new cash crop with potential to provide both economic and environmental benefits in Minnesota. In a field experiment, three winter barley cultivars that exhibited different levels of winter hardiness were sown at four planting dates (early September to mid-October with a ~2-week interval between each planting date) in St. Paul from 2010-2013 and 2015-2018 and in Lamberton from 2015-2019. Fall growing degree days (GDD), winter snow coverage, winter survival, and grain yield were evaluated across 10 site-years. Only 50% of siteyears had a winter survival at 20% or greater when averaged across all planting dates and cultivars. No specific planting date consistently resulted in maximum winter survival. McGregor, a non-malting barley, had the highest winter survival and yield. Planting dates that resulted in fall-accumulated GDD from 600 to 1400 were associated with better winter survival in years with sufficient snow cover. Less than 4 inches of snow cover and temperatures at or below -4°F for more than 3 days led to poor winter survival in 5 of the 10 site-years. Continued breeding for improved winter hardiness and agronomic research that provides best management practices will be needed to develop a practical winter barley cropping system for Minnesota.

Winter Malting Barley Growth, Yield, and Quality following Leguminous Cover Crops in the Northeast United States

“…Many experiments have been performed in much drier conditions [16][17][18][19][20]22,24,39] or with spring planted cultivars [3,16,17,22,24,39]. Furthermore, many studies have found substantial differences in malting quality even in winter malting barley cultivars [10,11,14,18]. Caution should be used when generalizing experimental results given the diversity of growing conditions across North America and the relative novelty of winter malting barley cultivation in the Northeast.…”

“…This experiment indicated that even though malting barley is quite sensitive to nitrogen level in grains [13,14,18], leguminous crops may be grown before winter malting barley without damaging the yield or malting quality of the barley crop (Table 5). This result differs somewhat from research on malting barley production following legume cover crops further north in New England.…”

“…Previous research has produced varietal recommendations for malting barley growing in the Northeast [10,11] as well as recommendations for planting dates and fertilization rates [13,14]. However, winter malting barley is still a relatively new and minor crop in the Northeast [15] and most scientific reports are related to the drier areas of western North America.…”

Evaluating winter malting barley grain yield with fractional green canopy cover

“…Most notably, over 50% of the 2014 barley crop in New York and the 2019 crop in Ohio were injured as a result of the polar vortex (Sonnenberg, 2019; Verbeten, Ganoe, O'Dea, Bergstrom, & Sorrells, 2014). Temperature fluctuations, reduced snow cover, and soil heaving during the winter and spring create challenges in the survival of winter malting barley, generating uncertainty among farmers regarding their crop's yield potential (Zhong, Wiersma, Sheaffer, Steffenson, & Smith, 2019).…”

Grain Production of the Winter Barley Under Growingin the Condititions of the Climatic Changes

“…Reducing soil temperature at a depth of occurrence of tillering node to -10 ─ -14°C leads as a rule to whole frost-killing of plants. Crops of early sowing dates are the most vulnerable in winter period so they often outgrow and loose stability to low temperatures very fast, especially without snow covering [8][9][10][11][12][13]. In view of this information grain-producers attend high profile not only to right choice of sort structure of winter barley; there must be connected organically high indices of yield, drought-resisting and firmness to diseases and pests, but also they pay attention to growing technology that finally determines productivity of this crop [14].…”