Prairie producers expected to plant more fall rye this year

With a high number of unseeded acres in parts of Western Canada due to spring flooding, there’s increased interest in fall-seeded crops.

At Ag in Motion, FP Genetics was promoting its fall rye varieties, catering to this increased interest. The company was the first to bring hybrid fall rye to Canada more than a decade ago.

In crop planning budgets, fall rye doesn’t typically rise to the top in profitability, but perhaps it warrants more consideration based on its many other attributes.

I sat down with Chad Yanchycki, sales manager with FP Genetics, to revisit what’s happening with this sometimes-overlooked cropping option.

Milling and distilling are still the most common uses for fall rye, with some ethanol plants also using rye in their blend. Beyond that, fall rye is one of the options for silage production, competing against winter wheat, fall triticale and barley.

Yanchycki says hybrid fall rye is doing very well under irrigation in southern Alberta, where it matures early enough that silage operations can start a couple weeks early, giving enough growing season to seed a second crop of silage barley.

Hybrid varieties yield much better than traditional varieties, but the yearly seed costs are high, and that’s a show stopper for many producers, particularly if they aren’t in an area or on land with consistently good yields.

However, Yanchycki points to the weed control advantages often provided by a fall-seeded crop.

If you attain good weed control before seeding, very little weed control may be required in the spring. Plus, fungicides are not typically recommended.

Seeding a crop while you’re in the midst of harvest operations can be a juggling act, but it lessens the workload in the spring. Many fall-seeded crops survived flooding issues this spring, producing a crop on land that wouldn’t otherwise have been seeded.

Fall-seeded crops can also be a benefit under dry conditions, taking more advantage of snow melt and early spring moisture.

Seeding a fall crop following canola is considered ideal because the tall standing stubble traps snow and provides insulation over winter. However, with pod shatter resistance in canola, more of that crop is being straight combined, often delaying harvest past the ideal window for fall seeding.

Yanchycki says producers are typically having good success seeding fall rye after a crop of peas, as long as the crop residue doesn’t prevent good seed to soil contact.

For producers who want a fall rye that yields better than traditional varieties but doesn’t cost as much as a hybrid for the seed, FP Genetics has come out with a high-yielding open-pollinated variety called Bebop, which carries a variety use agreement.

With this VUA, producers can save their own seed, but they have to pay a trailing royalty. In this case, the cost is about $5 an acre.

The grain yield of Bebop is rated at 114 per cent of the check variety AC Hazlet. The FP Genetics hybrid variety Performer is rated at 123 per cent.

Producers should also compare all the other traits, including winter survival, lodging, ergot, falling number and test weight. If growing for silage production, it’s useful to get comparisons on silage yield.

Another company with a wide range of fall rye hybrids is KWS. In the Saskatchewan Seed Guide, KWS varieties show yields of 121 to 135 per cent of the check variety.

Expect a significant acreage of fall rye to go in the ground this year, starting in late August.