DEVILS LAKE, ND. — Wheat industry representatives scouting fields in northwestern and northcentral North Dakota on July 24 found a large spring wheat crop with a lower presence of scab and other crop problems than they saw a day earlier in the southern tier of the top US spring wheat production state.

Scouts comprising wheat industry workers from producers to end users, on the basis of 99 field stops, calculated a day 2 tour average spring wheat yield estimate of 53.7 bus per acre (bpa), which compared with 45.7 bpa as the average yield estimate on the second day of the 2023 tour.

Participants issued field reports from each of 10 cars following six color-coded routes, which allowed comparisons with the same routes in previous years. The prominent notion in the reports was that the crop was ample and featured fewer instances of scab, wheat stem maggot, stripe rust and pests such as aphids than they saw a day earlier. Also, it was clear producers had done their best to confront those disease and pest pressures head on with timely applications of pesticide sprays. The estimated length of time until harvest varied widely due to the wide planting window this spring. Most spring wheat fields appeared three to five weeks from harvest.

The two-day cumulative average yield estimate for North Dakota spring wheat, on the basis of 195 field stops, was 53.1 bpa, which compared with 46.9 bpa as the 2023 estimate from the first two days of the 2023 tour based on 268 field stops.

As the tour proceeded into durum country, scouts were able to investigate 17 fields seeded to the wheat used to make pasta. The day 2 durum average yield was 45.6 bpa, which compared with 40.5 bpa in 2023. The two-day cumulative durum average yield estimate was 45.3 bpa.

Scouts were set to depart Devils Lake early July 25 to measure fields across northeastern North Dakota and down the eastern border with Minnesota to arrive at the final meeting to take place at the Northern Crops Institute on the campus of North Dakota State University.

The wheat tour is conducted annually under the auspices of the Wheat Quality Council and led by its executive vice president Dave Green with assistance from meeting host Brian Walker of BW Consulting LLC and tour statistician Rita Ott of General Mills.