News

Vomitoxin wheat use recommendations

Missouri wheat growers are dealing with an unprecedented level of vomitoxin in their wheat and the University of Missouri has recommendations for using it for cover crops and animal feed because so much has been rejected by grain elevators.

MU Agronomist Bill Wiebold tells Brownfield Ag News the wheat can be used as a cover crop with the caution that germination will be poor, “And the worse the vomitoxin, or the worse the fungal infection was, the lower the germination rate is going to be – so one just has to bump up the seeding rates. Basically, this is free seed so it doesn’t hurt to over plant.” He also points out that wheat is a cool season plant that won’t germinate in 90-degree weather or above.

Dr. Tim Evans, says vomitoxin wheat can be used for livestock feed at certain “safe” levels as determined by the FDA. But, he says, using it for bedding straw can bring forth another mycotoxin. Evans tells Brownfield, “Zearalenone has estrogenic effects and so that’s particularly of concern if feedstuffs are being fed to immature female animals — immature heifers and particularly immature gelts.”

Wiebold says there was so much disease pressure on wheat in Missouri this year that there wasn’t ANY good wheat – which can be blended in with certain levels of bad wheat.