LANSING, Mich. – The Michigan Wheat Program (MWP) is getting ready to hold its first virtual annual winter meeting.

Normally the sessions that make up the annual gathering all take place on one day at this time of year. Due to the fact that the event will take place online, the “gathering” will happen between Feb. 17 and March 24, according to Dennis Pennington, a wheat specialist at Michigan State University who is organizing the event. Although this is a first for this particular meeting, it is not the first online gathering for the organization.

Last June, the MWP held its first Virtual Field Day, which went well, Pennington said. About 163 people attended the event, while normally about 200 to 225 people have attended in the past. “To be honest, it takes more work to have a virtual meeting, but we haven’t had any major problems,” he stated. “Rural areas that do not have a good connection are really the main problem, but overall it hasn’t been a big obstacle. One advantage is we’ve been able to bring in speakers from outside our usual area as there are no travel costs.”

Pennington added that anyone who’s interested in growing wheat could find the annual meeting to be useful. The sessions are free and open to all. Pennington is one of the presenters: he will show some research topics that illustrate how wheat growers have gotten value out of the MWP, which is funded through a kind of tax on wheat growers in Michigan based on bushels produced. His presentation topics will include precision planting, seeding rate and seeding date recommendations, and theoretical maximum yield for wheat in Michigan.

“Seeding rate and seeding date are basically recommendations,” Pennington said. “These recommendations are about 20 years old and are out of date.” He will provide his own seeding rate and seeding date recommendations based on his research.

The winner of Michigan’s annual wheat yield contest will be officially announced during the March 24 online meeting, although everyone – including the winner – knows who it is, Pennington stated. The winner is Nick Suwyn, of Barry County, Mich., who achieved a yield of 170.2 bushels per acre last season. Typically, Michigan wheat growers achieve a yield of about 70 bushels an acre. Suwyn was somewhere in the top five of wheat growers in the national wheat yield contest as well. Although the winner of the Michigan wheat yield contest typically gets a free trip to the yearly Commodity Classic, this will not be possible this year because there will be no in-person Commodity Classic. That, too, will take place online.

Besides Pennington, presenters will include Angie Setzer, vice-president of grain, Citizens Elevator, LLC, of Charlotte, Mich.; Phil Needham, of Needham Ag Technologies of Calhoun, Ky.; Romulo Lollato, associate professor of wheat and forages production, Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan.; Pete Berry, head of crop physiology and principal scientist, ADAS, in North Yorkshire, England; and Peter Johnson, retired provincial cereal specialist for Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs in Ontario, Canada.

For more specifics on the meeting, guest topics and registration details, go the MWP web site at https://miwheat.org/, or call MWP Executive Director Jody Pollok Newsom at 517-625-9432.