How to Stage Wheat: Growth Stage Feekes 6 and 7 (Zadoks 31 and 32)

April 14, 2022

Dennis Pennington

In this video, you will see how to dig a plant, dissect it and learn what to look for to stage wheat at Feekes 6 and 7.

Video Transcript

okay so when it comes to staging the

wheat you want to pull out an individual

plant and this particular plant has one

main stem and it's got one two and a

third tiller starting to come here right

there

stage your main stem so don't try to

stage the tillers so i'm just gonna

break these off here uh to get down here

now what you're looking for what you're

trying to feel for is these bumps or a

node in in the stem so just run your

your thumb and your forefinger up the

stem and you can feel a bump and when i

do that i can feel one right here and

then i feel a second one up here

but i don't feel a third one yet so i

have two nodes which means if i had just

one it would be peak six two nodes means

were at peak seven uh and the the where

the head is developing head is at in the

stem is up here at the top of the

uppermost node

we're gonna want to dissect this to

identify and find where that is at where

the developing head is

and we're just going to kind of finish

our staging discussion here so we're

going to strip these leaves back what

i'm looking for is the leaf that is

attached to this bottom node because

that will be considered leaf number one

and then there will be four leaves above

it the fourth leaf above it will be the

flag leaf which is the penultimate leaf

which is the last leaf out before the

head emerges

so if i strip this back this

leaf right here is attached to this note

so this is leaf one

this is leaf number two this is leaf

number three and then right there is

your flag leaf just starting to emerge

out of the world right here

so when we're staging this trying to

identify um damage uh for frost we want

slice this open so that we can expose

the head so i'm going to slice this open

on my leg here and then i'll explain

what we're seeing inside the the plant

or inside the stem

okay

i'll hold this stem open here

and down here at the bottom is our first

node right here

and then there's what this is what's

called the space in between these two

nodes right here is called our internode

space so this is node number two this is

what determines that this one is at

peaks eight or sorry feet seven um and

then the developing head is actually

pushed up right here and you can see the

little teeny tiny spikelets on that head

MSU Extension Wheat