USA
August 14, 2014
Horizon Ag welcomed over 100 attendees to its 2014 Clearfield® rice variety field day held last week at Mark Wimpy Farms outside Jonesboro, AR.
The event included a look at current and new Clearfield varieties, a seeding rate study recap and reports from both LSU and University of Arkansas Extension personnel. It was a demonstration of the focus Horizon Ag has on providing valuable agronomic information to help rice farmers maximize production and profits, said Tim Walker, who spent 16-plus years in rice research at Mississippi State University and now leads Horizon Ag as general manager.
Horizon Ag General Manager Tim Walker address the crowd.
"A farmer's decision-making must be based on his return on investment, and one of our commitments at Horizon Ag is to work closely with our partners in Extension to demonstrate the financial upside of planting high-performing, superior-quality Clearfield rice varieties," Walker said. "This event reflects that commitment."
New Clearfield Varieties
Sunny Bottoms, Horizon Ag technical services manager, delivered characteristics and management recommendations on the current commercial Clearfield varieties, CL111, CL151 and CL152. She also introduced two exciting new high-quality lines, as well as a new medium-grain Clearfield variety.
Horizon Ag Technical Services Manager Sunny Bottoms discusses new Clearfield varieties.
CL271 is a new Clearfield medium-grain currently in seed production and should be available for commercial planting in 2015. This variety offers several improvements over CL261 with preliminary data indicating a disease package similar to Jupiter.
"The two new high-quality lines are being grown for seed production this season and being evaluated by buyers for quality and cooking properties," said Bottoms.
CL172 is a new semi-dwarf variety that contains the Pita gene, making it resistant to several races of blast. CL163 is a semi-dwarf line with "Dixiebelle" cook-type, which should make this variety an excellent fit for the domestic parboil market, as well as the Central American export market, said Bottoms.
The newest Clearfield varieties are examples of the efforts made by Horizon Ag and its university partners to improve not only yield potential and production practices, but also the quality of rice being grown in the United States.
"Not only are we committed to improving production on U.S. rice farms, Horizon Ag is also focused on improving the overall quality of U.S.-grown rice to meet the needs of our export partners," Walker said. "Our industry was once the unmatched leader in producing high-quality rice grain, but today, there is more competition for that title. We can separate ourselves again by focusing breeding and development on varieties that bring value at the buyer level and improved production at the farm level."
Extension Reports
Jarrod Hardke, Rice Specialist for the University of Arkansas reported that the state's rice crop looked very good in August, with a declining number of calls reporting sheath blight or leaf blast. He said neck and panicle blast have been reported and those diseases have the potential to severely limit yield potential.
"We need to monitor this rice crop for these diseases as this season winds down toward harvest," Hardke cautioned.
LSU rice agronomist Dustin Harrell gave the field day crowd insight into managing phosphorous and potassium fertilizer rates for optimal yield. Concerning phosphorous, a rice crop that yields 200-bushel per acre would remove about 60 pounds of P2O5 from the soil. A 222 bushel per acre crop would remove about 70 pounds, he said.
"According to current fertilizer recommendations in the state of Louisiana, the highest recommendation for phosphorous at the lowest soil test for P is only 60 pounds," said Harrell. "So, in some cases we're actually removing more than we recommend applying. With a ratoon crop, you'd remove another 20 pounds there. We are trying to address those issues and improve our fertilizer recommendations."
Potassium is a different story, he said. The crop takes up a lot more potassium, but only 17% of the uptake is contained in the grain. A 200-bushel rice crop might only be removing 31 pounds of K2O per acre. Proper timing of fertilizer applications, however, is even more important to reaching optimal yield potential, Harrell said.
"The best timing is at planting or right before the plants need those nutrients," he said. "As you go later into the season, you are going to lose yield potential. Farmers need to pull a soil test and know how much P or K is in the soil, understand the variety they are planting and how that variety responds to nitrogen. Have some type of indication how much nitrogen that variety will need and apply the nitrogen efficiently to maximize yield potential."
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