2019 Wisconsin Winter Wheat Performance Trails

Aug 08, 2019

By Shawn Conley

The Wisconsin Winter Wheat Performance Trials are conducted each year to give growers information to select the best-performing varieties that will satisfy their specific goals. The performance trials are conducted each year at four locations in Wisconsin: Arlington, Chilton, Fond du Lac and Sharon. Trials include released varieties, experimental lines from University breeding programs and lines from private seed companies. The primary objective of these trials is to quantify how varieties perform at different locations and across years. Growers can use this data to help select which varieties to plant; breeders can use performance data to determine whether to release a new variety.

Source : wisc.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.