AgFax: MidSouth Rice
By Owen Taylor
AgFax
Harvest is gaining a bit of momentum in southwest Louisiana, and a few combines may be running in Texas rice by now.
Midsouth rice has started heading on a wider basis, and scattered fields in Arkansas and Mississippi are now fully headed.
Extreme heat is pushing the Delta crop along. Temperatures have been solidly in the 90s for a week or more and that weather pattern will hold well into the month across much of the region. Concerns are being raised about high nighttime temperatures and their disruptive effect on pollination in flowering rice.
Rice stink bugs will be the next issue as more rice heads in the Midsouth. It’s too early to say how they will trend.
Hank Jones, RHJ Ag Services, Winnsboro, Louisiana
“Most of my rice is either in the boot stage or very close to entering it, and a third of my rice has started to head. We’ve made fungicide applications on about a third of the crop, as well.
“Row rice is more erratic as it heads. Plants in the water are starting to head, but heading is a little delayed in drier parts of fields.
“We’re not seeing a lot of disease issues yet. The biggest obstacle we faced this year was moving water across fields in row rice production. Water moved down the field fine, but it was a hard task to get it to migrate across the fields. We had to supplement a bunch of streaks where fertilizer wasn’t activated. We worked out some of the kinks, and rains really benefited the row rice in those cases.
“In soybeans, growers are starting to spray a lot of redbanded stink bugs (RBSB). We’re at about 75% threshold (7/13) in places, and we’ve been riding a bunch of sub-threshold RBSB populations for 14 to 17 days. It’s time to clean them up because we are starting to see a few immatures. Small numbers of southern green and a couple of brown stink bugs are in the mix, but we’re mainly spraying RBSB.
Harold Lambert, Independent Consultant, Ventress, Louisiana
“Most of the oldest rice is headed out, and it ranges from pollination to late-pollen or early milk. Some of those acres have been treated for stink bugs. The numbers aren’t tremendous like we’ve seen in the past, but we are finding enough to spray.
“We do have a lot of late rice that was planted after crawfish harvest, and I expect to have stink bugs fairly consistently in those fields.
“Corn is pretty much done. A lot of my corn is at black layer, and the rest is close behind.
“The oldest soybeans are at R6. Several of those fields have been treated for stink bugs twice now, and the majority have been treated at least once, which is normal. Redbanded stink bugs have been late showing up, which I think validated how well we handled them near the end of last season. We had no winter kill at all. When combined with counts of other species, we were over threshold in a lot of fields.
“Aerial blight has only been an issue in a few fields that have a history of it. So far, defoliating caterpillars are staying really light.”
Dustin Harrell, Louisiana Rice Extension Specialist, LSU Rice Research Station, Crowley
“Some of our first rice has been harvested, and that began over the weekend and then into this week. Just a few yield reports have filtered in. Some CL111 ranged from 44 to 46 barrels/acre. A bit of PVL02 averaged 42 barrels and some Clearfield Jasmine went 43. These are just the very earliest fields, and we expect the majority of our harvest to really get going in about a week.
“We’re definitely in a heat wave, with temperatures in the mid-90s most days and nighttime temperatures at or above 75 degrees.
“Those high nighttime lows are bad for rice that’s flowering. These excessive nighttime temperatures can cause fissuring, which would lead to a lower milling yield. Also, the heat causes plants to pack starch too quickly in the grain, which can lead to chalkiness. A portion of the crop is in that space. It went in during the latter part of the recommended planting window.
“However, a big part of our southwest Louisiana crop is out of harm’s way in that regard. The largest share of our rice was planted in early to mid-March, and most of that has been drained and should be fine.
“In northeast Louisiana, growers planted a good bit of medium-grain rice, with a lot of that in row rice production. And in this medium grain, we’re seeing leaf blast. Jupiter, a medium grain variety, is very susceptible to leaf blast. Often, you’ll find leaf blast, but it may not turn into rotten neck blast later. At least, that’s what we see in flooded rice.
“You’ll want to go with a two-fungicide program where you’ve planted a susceptible variety and it’s in row rice production. With leaf blast in paddy rice, you can manage it by raising the water level. In row rice, you don’t have that option.
“The South American rice miner (SARM) seems to be everywhere. It’s also known as the whorl maggot, and in places it’s making rice look ragged and ugly. I’m finding SARM in every late field I walk in southwest Louisiana, with some in central Louisiana, too.
“Now that harvest has begun, it’s time to think about ratoon rice. One of the management practices that has been most successful in increasing yields is stubble management. You want to run a flail or rotary mower and lower stubble height to about eight inches. Or, you can roll the stubble. Either approach forces the ratoon crop to originate from the crown node, not one of the upper nodes.