Top Crop Manager: Investigating optimum plant spacing in wheat

Narrower is better.

Research at the University of Manitoba looked into the Goldilocks moment for wheat row spacing and seeding rate: not too wide, not too narrow, but something just right. The research was led by Robert Gulden, professor of plant science at the University of Manitoba.

“When we did the research, there was a lot of interest by grower groups to revisit plant spatial arrangement to see if the recommendations from years ago still hold,” says Gulden. “Interestingly, no one seems to know where the recommendations for wheat came from. We were doing similar research and had built the first drill capable of doing multiple row spacings without having all openers in the ground, so the tool and the research ideas came together to revisit some of the old recommendations.”

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