2102 blog field harvested

Harvest of the blog field Tuesday (July 31) resulted in a respectable yield of 50.25 barrels per acre, or 8,141 pounds per acre, according to Larry White, manager of the Rice Research Station’s foundation seed program.

No second crop will be grown, and the field will now be allowed to remain fallow for 2 years before it is planted in rice again.

Blog field visitor

A critter recently traipsed through the blog field, as shown by the photo below of the tracks. The animal entered the east side of the field and made a bee-line for the west side.

Weeds under attack

Larry White, foundation seed manager at the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station, sprayed a mixtures of the herbicides propanil, Permit and Londax. The chemicals will address a spectrum of weeds that includes grasses, sedges and aquatic plants, including alligatorweed.

Fertilizer is scheduled to be applied this week, followed by the permanent flood.

Leadership class visits Rice Research Station

The USA Rice Leadership Class of 2012 visited the Rice Research Station for supper Wednesday night. They were treated with Cajun music and heard from Dr. Mike Strain, secretary of the state Department of Agriculture and Forestry, who talked about the healthy condition of the state’s  agricultural industry.

Thursday, the class was given a tour of the Rice Research Station, then visited the Zaubrecher farm near Rayne to watch different farming techniques. They later dined on crawfish at the home of farmer Christian Richard and his wife Julie.

Farmers in the class are Brian Barrett, Arbuckle, Calif.; Rance Daniels, Hornersville, Mo.; Timothy Gertson, Lissie, Texas; Noble Guedon, Natchez, Miss.; and Clint Roth, Stuttgart, Ark..

The industry-related class members are Dr. Natalie Hummel, LSU  AgCenter entomologist, and Brice Lauppe, rice buyer from Farmer’s Rice Cooperative in Roseville, Calif.

After the rain

Rice seedlings received a welcome dose of rain, 1.35 inches to be exact, on Monday. More rain is expected Wednesday as farmers work to get their crops planted. Shown above  are rice seedlings in the wet soil.

 In the picture below, Bill Leonards, Rice Research Station farm manager, takes measurements to repair a plastic fitting in the blog field.

Breaking through the crust

Despite last week’s torrential rain, the surface of the blog field is dry and crusty. Shown above is a rice sprout breaking through the soil within a small animal footprint. Below is a picture of the seedling.

Larry White, director of the LSU AgCenter’s foundation seed program, expects emergence of the crop will be visible in a day or two.

Check the progress of the blog field

You can see how the rice crop is doing on the blog field in real time.
Here's how: on the right side of the screen, you'll see "Rice Field WEBCAM." Click on the link right below it that says http://www.lsuagcenter.com/ricecam.

2012 blog field planted

The 2012 blog field, a 6-acre field of Jazzman 2, was planted  Monday. Early Wednesday morning, a welcome rain of almost 2.5 inches flushed the field and that should help the seeds sprout.  In the movie clip above, water is draining from the field. By Thursday morning, most of the field had been drained.

Larry White, LSU AgCenter foundation seed manager at the Rice Research Station, drill seeded at the rate of 40 pounds per acre. The seed was treated prior to planting with a fungicide, Dermacor to control rice water weevils  and gibberillic acid  to promote early growth before it was planted.

Before planting, White sprayed herbicides to control existing weeds that included sedges and barnyardgrass.

All done

The final of 3 fields of rice shown on the webcam was cut Wednesday, with a yield of 37 barrels per acre for the CL161 variety. Harvest was completed Friday on the first field, the  CL 131 variety, and the yield was approximately 43 barrels per acre. The second field, CL151, was cut Monday and it yielded around 47 barrels. Shown in the video above is the harvest Friday at the first field.

First rice harvested at the station

Yesterday, the first rice was cut for 2011 on the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station. But harvesting was done by hand, not by a combine, because this is rice grown in transplanted rows for the breeding projects of Drs. Xueyan Sha and Steve Linscombe, and they have to be able to tag each bundle of rice so it can be identified after it is threshed and dried.

As you can see from the video below, this is hot and dirty work and very little breeze was noticeable even in the middle of the day.

 These plants are the F1 generation from crosses made for variety improvement last summer. The seed from those crosses was planted in the greenhouse in mid- February. As soon as it was warm enough, the resulting plants were transplanted by hand into this field. These bundles will be threshed and the resulting seed will be dried. Much of this seed will be loaded into planting cells and shipped to the winter nursery facility near Lajas, Puerto Rico, where it will be planted  in late July/early August.  The winter nursery allows these breeding projects to conduct varietal improvement research year-around.

In the meantime, the field that is the focus of the webcam is expected to be harvested in a little more than a month. Larry White, station foundation seed manager, said the rice plants are just starting to develop heads where the rice panicles are being formed.

Rice Research Station Field Day prep work

If you have been to the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station in the past few days, you would have seen a flurry of activity for the upcoming annual Field Day held at the station. Grass is being mowed, the road is being graded, signs have been erected and LSU AgCenter county agents and specialists were getting briefed Wednesday, the day before the event, on what would be presented. Later, Dr. Johnny Saichuk, LSU AgCenter rice specialists, conducted an education session for county agents in the rice growing parishes.


A surprise will be evident to LSU fans during the field tours, which start at 7:15 a.m. The last trailer for the tour leaves at 9:15 a.m., and a program will begin at 10:30 a.m. The field day ends with a lunch.

Below, the county agents and other LSU AgCenter personnel listen to remarks of Dr. Natalie Hummel, LSU AgCenter entomologist during Wednesday's preparation.

Below, Dr. Don Groth, LSU AgCenter plant pathologist, tells county agents what comments he will make at the field day. You can see the county agents' reflections in his sunglasses.

Permanent flood

The well was started Wednesday for the permanent flood on the blog field. If everything goes as planned, the water won’t be released until 2 weeks before harvest, expected in mid-August.


Larry White, foundation seed manager at the Rice Research Station, applied a herbicide combination Tuesday of RiceBeaux and Permit. Wednesday morning, an airplane flew 200 pounds of urea fertilizer per acre just before the valve was opened for the water, shown in the video below.

Killing weeds

Larry White went on the attack Friday morning against young weeds, specifically barnyardgrass, sedges and alligator weed.


He sprayed a mixture of Permit and Londax, each at a half-ounce per acre each Permit at the rate of a half-ounce per acre, and Londax, and 1 gallon per acre of propanil.

White said he waited to spray Newpath on the Clearfield varieties 131, 151 and 161 because of a slight wind that might have blown it onto a nearby field of Jazzman II.

Click on the video below to view the spraying process:

Dr. Herry Utomo, molecular geneticist at the Rice Research Station, is applying the methods he uses to help rice breeders in developing varieties of spartina marsh grass. Monday, an airplane flew to the east side of Marsh Island in Vermilion Bay to drop seeds of the plants Utomo and his staff have developed. The area planted is a test being conducted as part of a federally funded 1,159-acre project being administered by the Louisiana Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration and the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

A total of 3.8 million cubic yards of dredged material was removed from East Cote Blanche Bay to repair hurricane damage on Marsh Island. Levees were built to contain the material.

Shown in the picture above with Utomo, the airplane dropped the smooth cordgrass seed in the same way that rice seed is applied by air.

However, most of the revegetation on the project will use small marsh plants that will be transplanted by hand.

Click on the videos below to see the planting operation:

Early morning rain Tuesday

For the first time in 2 weeks, it rained Tuesday morning at the Rice Research Station, and throughout Southwest Louisiana. The total in the rain gauge was 3.35 inches, just the third time rain was recorded at the station this month. Previous rains were on April 5 with .1 of an inch, and April 16 with .16 of an inch.


Larry White, director of the station’s foundation seed program, said the rice on the blog field emerged either Friday or Saturday and the rainfall provided enough moisture to cover the seedlings. He said the field will be sprayed with herbicide next week.

Fertilizer applied Tuesday

Windy conditions made application of fertilizer by airplane an interesting task Tuesday. Notice in the video below how the pilot angles the aircraft to compensate for the strong south wind. The 8-24-24 fertilizer was applied at the rate of 250 pounds per acre. During the night, the field was flooded. Young rice plants should emerge in a few days.

New webcam field is planted today

The webcam at the LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station will focus on foundation seed production of three Clearfield varieties. Each variety will be planted on approximately four acres. The three varieties are (left to right) CL151, CL131, and CL161. Each variety will be seeded at approximately 45 pounds per acre.
In the photo above, Foundation Seed Manager Larry White is planting the field.
To see the webcam, click on the link on the right side of this page.

You can also click on the movie clip below to see the planting. This is the first attempt at video on this blog.

Blog field harvested

The blog field was harvested Thursday (Aug. 26) with a yield of 47.2 barrels per acre (170 bushels or 76.4 hundredweight), according to Larry White, director of the LSU AgCenter. The field of medium-grain rice was cut at 17 percent moisture.


Next year this same field will be fallow.

Fertilizer applied again

The blog field was fertilized this morning with  urea (46 percent nitrogen) at the rate of 100 pounds per acre. Plants are at the green ring (panicle initiation) stage of development. This growth stage signals a shift from vegetative growth to the initiation of reproductive growth. At this stage, the panicle where the grain will later be formed begins to develop at the base of the stem.

Fertilizer applied, now time for permanent flood

Nitrogen fertilizer was applied to the field Tuesday afternoon by airplane at the rate of 92 pounds per acre. Now Larry White, director of the foundation seed program at the  LSU AgCenter Rice Research Station, will soon be turning on the valve to release water for the permanent flood.

What little moisture the field has received has been from pumping. The last rainfall at the station was on May 3 with .03 of an inch. The entire month of April brought only a half-inch of rain, and so far the rainfall total for 2010 is only 9.7 inches compared to 23.77 inches last year. Below you can see the dried earth and the young rice plants.