Panhandle REC

The High Plains Ag Lab  June Field Day and 50th (+1) Anniversary Celebration on June 15 will provide not only a showcase for current research at HPAL, but also recognition of the past half-century of service to agriculture in the region. Attendees tour the wheat variety plots at the 2019 High Plains Ag Lab June field day. (Courtesy photo.) The field day will start in the afternoon and include a supper and tailgate expo at 6:30 p.m., following the field tours.

The crop research plots at the Panhandle Research and Extension Center on the edge of Scottsbluff occupy several hundred acres altogether. Some of the plots are an acre or less in size, some are dozens of acres. Among the sugarbeets, dry edible beans, corn, wheat, sunflowers and various alternative crops, is a small patch of pepper plants. It’s not the peppers that researchers are interested in, but the thin sheets of mulch that cover the ground around each row of plants.

Nebraska growers have been severely affected by stripe rust in wheat crops for the last decade, particularly in the western half of the state.Stripe rust is not necessarily a new disease but it has become much more prevalent and problematic than the other wheat rust disease (leaf rust), which has historically been our major rust disease. It was less damaging in 2017 than in some of the previous seasons, but still emerged late in the season in some isolated areas of the Panhandle.