Episode 3 - 2019 Rice Harvest Update with Jarrod Hardke

Arkansas Row Crops Radio, providing up to date information and timely recommendations on row crop production in Arkansas.

Jarrod Hardke: Welcome to Arkansas Row Crops Radio. My name is Jarrod Hardke, Rice Extension Agronomist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

Id like a little today about rice harvest and drying issues going on in the field currently today, Sept. 20,. 2019. A few questions going on out there in the field. Some have centered around fall smut out there particularly in the later planted rice that's still to harvest. Really with that, we wrote a little on, or written newsletter last week, but just to follow up on that topic. Several of our preferred cultivars right now, both varieties and hybrids, can have a little more susceptibility to fall smut, to begin with, and then when we move into later planting dates, the potential for fall smut increases when we have higher nitrogen rates. A wet year like this, many did try to push the nitrogen a little bit, trying to get as much yield out of the crop as possible. That push in nitrogen rate is going to further exaggerate the potential for fall smut. So obviously diamond from Rice Tech to Gemini from 2-14 clear field or XP760, then the PBLO1 variety. Those are some of the main ones not just those but one of the main ones that are going to have the potential because they are very susceptible to fall smut, to begin with. In reality, even if you did make a fungicide application of generally speaking triazole to tilt or propiconazole, even in a pretty good rate, if you hit the minimum six-ounce rate even went higher at an eight- to 10-ounce rate, there's a potential that you're still only going to see 50 to 70% suppression of fall smut. Given how showy the fall smut spores that spore ball can be, it can still look like you didn't do much damage with that fungicide application, and you may have actually done a very good job suppressing that fall smut fungus. However, again, when you start thinking that you have 200 to 250, some in that range, kernels per panicle, when you see a few of them it can seem like there's a lot, but it's only replacing a few kernels, and again fall smut differs in many ways from kernel smut. Fall smut is going to replace those kernels pretty much entirely. And there would be theoretically some potential for the plant to go ahead and fill some other kernels it may not have planned on originally based on its resources to combat that loss of a few kernels, so you're probably not going to see that yield loss from fall smut unless its a very exaggerated terrible situationsa0w some very bad instances of fall smut last year in 2018 to no result, cut some phenomenal yields. 

On the milling side of things, kernel smut again a much greater problem. Kernel smut forms inside the hull. It's replacing all or part of the kernel. It's very difficult to get out in the cleaning and milling process, so you end up contaminating a lot of grain because it's very difficult to get out. Fall smut, again, on the other hand, forms in a way that's its replaced the whole kernel. It's very exposed. It gets dried down and removed very easily in the sorting, cleaning process. You're again less likely to see a milling impact from fall smut compared to kernel smut. 

Really beyond that certainly one the potential even one of the bigger topics beyond the fall smut conversation going on right now is just how rapidly grain moisture has been dropping in the field, and this is something we have been talking about for a couple of weeks since it finally decided to turn very hot and dry. Very unique weather pattern at least for 2019 or really since the fall of 2018, that's been raining and now for the last month, its rained very little. Very hot and dry, very low dew. Some mornings there's virtually no dew. That doesn't mean we're not seeing a little elevation of grain moisture early in the morning, but you can walk out there and not even get your pants wet, there's so very little dew at that point and time. So again, very high temperatures getting in the upper 90s and then falling off at night down in the 60s. That tells you how low the humidity is because when we have very high humidity, the temperature cannot get very high, and then you don't have the fallout at night. You keep a much more narrow temperature range. That's a big reason for the fallout. There are folks out there right now cutting rice that's even in the 12 to 13% moisture range out of the field. That doesn't seem like it should be that dry, but that is the fallout and again not having the heavy dew set or any rains intermittent to kind of keep the moisture up in the grain. That's the large driver. 

The one thing with that moisture drop that's going to be a little bit counter intuitive to what we would normally say our usual rule of thumb is that when our grain moisture falls too rapidly down to the levels we are talking about here - your 12, 13, 14%, essentially getting below 16% - that we should see more milling problems. But the reason it's counter intuitive is because the lack of moisture being applied back to this grain as it dries down in the form of dew or rainfall is not going to create the same rewetting and drying that typically results in all the fissures that end up lower our head rice yields that we're normally concerned with. We're starting to get some potential rain or wet pattern may be back now. Temperatures are going to back off a little bit, and so that may allow some more rainfall to start coming in now. It may be a little bit of concern going forward, but it's not too much of a surprise for rice that's been coming out so far that milling yields have largely been holding up pretty well. There may be the potential for some fields milling lower and that having maybe to do with maybe being drained a little too early. Again running into that heat that we haven't seen coming with our hot September has turned into, but again milling yields holding up better than most would expect, but when you kind of think about the uniqueness of the scenario, once again another unique thing about 2019 of being so dry that were not seeing the typical negative impacts of harvesting at lower milling yields. 

A few other questions have revolved around drying charges, particularly relating to again very dry rice being taken out of the field. Keep in mind there's always going to be a charge everywhere for green rice - that being rice taken directly out of the field and delivered somewhere. No matter how dry that rice is, there's always green material in there. There are always some greener kernels, green tissues, stems, leaves, all those portions and ultimately they're all going to go through a dryer and have to be processed. There's always going to be a charge related to that even when it's pretty dry.

Again, rice from last season or even rice from this year that has been run through a grain bin and already dried and a lot of that material is gone, that's definitely going to be in a different scenario as far as avoiding drying charges, but again someones still running air or potentially even heat over that grain to dry it down. If you take anybody - whether it's being delivered somewhere or to your own bins - if you put in that bin you're going to have to run air over it or you're going to see that moisture come up once its piled in there.

Also keep in mind that our standard for dry long-term storage rice is 12% moisture, so anything over 12% is typically going to have a shrinkage deduction applied to it and that's a pretty standard calculation so at times it may still seem large, but the conversion back to 12% is pretty straight forward. so again even something at 12.5% moisture at delivery is going to have a correction to 12%.

Just a few things again to keep in mind as we continue through harvest. We're about halfway done, top and bottom in the state. Largely again, very good progress, mostly positive yield reports. There are isolated incidents out there that may have been yield issues related to herbicides drift. Some of them seem related to some of the pop-up thunderstorms that did occur back during flowering on some of these fields. Again for the most part yield reports have been largely positive. So feel good about this year so far. Still, a lot to learn on the later planted rice about how well it has held up but with the mild temperatures throughout the summer, we feel pretty confident that they are going to hold up much better than they usually do in what we'll call an average year. Still don't know what an average year is, but average across previous years gives us some perspective so again still expecting those to hold up pretty well and including the milling there, but this heat has played unique games with that rice as well as it has tried to fill. We still have again another half of the crop to get out as were most of the way through September now, and well continue to monitor things going forward and pass along any recommendations or advice as we get an opportunity.

And with that, I'm going to wrap it up for today. Thanks for joining us once again on Arkansas Row Crops Radio.

Arkansas Row Crops Radio is a production of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. For more information please contact your local county extension agent or visit uaex.edu