Our field has completed blooming and almost all the heads are
drooping. You can still see some ray flowers. The plants still have good
color and there aren't any noticeable drought symptoms. We haven't had
much rain since July 10th and we've had 8 days over 100 F.
 This R6 plant completed blooming several days ago. The bracts aren't as
green as they were last week. Let's look at the backside of the
receptacle.
 The receptacle and bracts aren't as green as they were. This is
normal development of the heads. They will eventually turn
yellow.
 The cross section of this head shows continued seed development.
Let's look a little closer.
 The seeds are getting
larger. There appear to be
flowers in the
center that weren't pollinated because there aren't many seeds there. These
center flowers not developing seeds could be a symptom of drought
stress. We'll
have to keep watching this to see if it's a widespread problem or if I just
got a head that isn't that far along in its maturation.
 We haven't discussed this before, but there's an optimum head size that
farmers like to see. The head on the left is about 6-8 inches wide, while
the other head is about 10 inches wide. Farmers like to see heads about 6-8
inches wide because it allows for quicker dry-down of the head and seed.
This will allow the farmer to harvest a field quicker. Harvesting a field
sooner as opposed to later reduces seed or yield losses and as farmers get
paid for the total pounds of seed, it is very important they harvest
everything they produce. But you're probably wondering how farmers
make sure they end up with the right head size. The answer is planting
rates. Higher planting rates cause the heads to be smaller, conversely lower
than optimum planting rates will result in larger head sizes. |
Our field has completed blooming and almost all the heads are
drooping. You can still see some ray flowers. The plants still have good
color and there aren't any noticeable drought symptoms. We haven't had
much rain since July 10th and we've had 8 days over 100 F.
