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| Here in Kentucky, the majority of the winter wheat is no-tilled and most of those no-till acres follow corn. Planting wheat after corn is not ideal from a stand uniformity OR a fusarium perspective, but it fits well within a double-crop rotation of Corn-Wheat-Doublecrop soybeans. Lots of time and research has been spent figuring out no-till wheat and now most KY growers do a good job treating their wheat seed with a seed treatment fungicide, setting up their no-till drills to successfully plant into corn stalks, plus they understand the importance of applying fungicides at flowering (if fusarium risk is high). Most of my conventional vs. no-till replicated comparisons (into corn stalks) are within 3-5 bu/ac of each other and University of Kentucky and co-operative research trials supply similar results, so growers should not be afraid of no-tilling wheat into cornstalks if they set themselves up for success up front.
No-tilling into corn stalks should be easier than normal this fall, because of the reduced residue volume and early corn harvest (assuming we get rain to break down the stalks). We always plant varieties that have a higher than average tolerance to fusarium and we always plant by live seeds per square yard or live seeds per acre. Seeding just by pounds per acre is a worthless method unless you take the seed sizes and germination % into consideration. Good seed wheat is in short supply this fall and seed is coming in from all areas, and seed sizes will be all over the place. In a normal year seed sizes can range from around 10,000 seeds per pound, to around 16,000 seeds per pound. I am going to guess that there will be a greater range in seed sizes this fall, plus a big range in germination and seed vigor scores, so be sure to plant by live seed population to eliminate these potential seed quality problems. Be aware that some untreated seed wheat lots are coming back with 50-75% germination %, so be sure to check seed quality.
Normally we see about a 10-25% reduction in wheat emergence % when we no-till into corn stalks compared to seeding into conventional soil conditions, (It may even be higher or lower than this depending on amount of residue decomposition, seed quality and the condition/set-up of the no-till drill), so seeding rates will likely need to be raised according to soil/residue levels.
Below are a couple of examples where we obtained the same final stand, but the seeding rate was increased by around 25% on the no-till field (same grower with 2 different drills running in adjacent fields, one no-till and one conventional). Look at the numbers and stand counts per yard of row, we then figured them back to plants per square yard.
Phil N
http://www.needhamag.com
Edited by Phil N 10/9/2010 21:17
 (Conventional Tillage Wheat (Medium).jpg)
 (No Till Wheat (Medium).jpg)
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 Conventional Tillage Wheat (Medium).jpg (74KB - 478 downloads)
No Till Wheat (Medium).jpg (87KB - 511 downloads)
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No-till wheat into corn stalks
