CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Wheat and barley are the most important winter cereals in Argentina representing ca. 6.000.000 and 400.000 hectares, respectively, during the last campaign (http://www.sagpya.mecon.gov.ar). Although pre-germination and pre-harvest sprouting processes generally did not constitute a severe production restriction, it could be a real problem in the close near future as a consequence of the expansion of the agricultural frontier to other marginal areas with more favorable environmental conditions to promote sprouting. Previous sprouting events in wheat occurred during 1996, due to wet climate conditions during grain filling, determining that most of wheat grains at harvest were classified out of the standard grade forcing to the Agricultural Secretariat Organism to create a new standard category for that grains i.e feeding wheat category. Similar conditions occurred during the 2001 growing season, with a rainy period during grain filling, determining grains with a poor rheological quality (i.e. lower Hagberg Falling Number) and higher risk of sprouting. During that year the barley cultivar B1215, with high yield potential and extremely low dormancy at harvest, suffered a dramatic damage by sprouting, with severe adverse consequence on malting, leaving the cultivar out of the commercial market. Empirical models are available for some barley cultivars taking into account temperature within a time window during grain filling that can be used for predicting pre-harvest sprouting risk. In the case of wheat, the crop has expanded during the last 10 years as a consequence of the sequence double crop soybean-wheat rotation, to marginal areas of North East and North West of the country with monsoon climates which increase the risk of sprouting due to excessive precipitations during the grain filling period.