Good wheat prospects in central N.Dakota

(Reuters) — Spring wheat has good yield potential in west-central North Dakota, aided by early planting, scouts on one leg of an annual crop tour said on Wednesday.

Crop scouts on the Wheat Quality Council’s tour traveling one route in west-central North Dakota made six stops, mostly in McLean County, and projected an average yield of 65.1 bushels per acre (bpa), well above the tour’s year-ago average for the same route near 48.5 bpa.

Scouts in a second car travelling that same route calculated an average yield of 46 bpa after four stops. In the previous five years, yield averages for cars on the same tour route ranged from 44 to 51 bpa.

“Planting was significantly ahead (of normal), followed by timely moisture. Spring wheat had everything going for it on the front end,” said Reid Christopherson, executive director of the South Dakota Wheat Commission and a scout on the tour.

“The wheat is there, if we can keep it healthy and stay out of the hail,” Christopherson added. Severe weather in the Dakotas in recent weeks, including hot spells, storms and high winds, has knocked down plants in some fields, making harvest a challenge and threatening grain quality.

A third group of crop scouts surveying fields in northwest North Dakota, in Mountrail and Ward counties, sampled seven spring wheat fields and calculated an average yield of 40.9 bpa, compared to the year-ago average for the same route near 45 bpa.

The group also sampled three durum fields and projected an average yield of 43.3 bpa, compared to the year-ago durum average on the route of 39.5.

On day one of the tour on Tuesday, crop scouts found the strongest spring wheat yield prospects in 21 years after surveying crops in southern North Dakota and neighboring sections of South Dakota and Minnesota.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has forecast a record-high North Dakota spring wheat yield of 48 bushels per acre for 2015, topping the 2014 record of 47.5.

About 66 crop scouts drawn from the milling, baking and grain-handling sectors are traveling from Fargo to Bismarck, North Dakota, on the first day of the Wheat Quality Council’s three-day tour. The tour is scheduled to release a final spring wheat yield forecast on Thursday.