Couple from India leads wheat research

LIND - The Lind Dryland Research station has been around since 1915, and has gone through a succession of leaders.

But the last two years it has been headed by a couple from India.

Surendra and Shikha Singh are employees of Washington State University, respectively, as assistant professor and director, and research assistant professor.

The research station exists to help area farmers get the most out of crops that survive or even thrive, on little annual rainfall.

"We have wheat, peas and canola," Surendra Singh said. "So, we work on all three crops, with ongoing research in camelina as well."

Surendra Singh said the station researches fertilizer, tillage and breeding trials to include winter and spring wheat.

"So, we pretty much do everything possible on whatever we can on trial and farming," he said. "We try all new techniques and rotations and share the results with farmers."

Historically the station has had some triumphs.

One such success was the release of Gaines, a soft white winter wheat released in 1961. The following year, there were 500,000 bushels released for fall production and much local agricultural interest.

Ten years later, the station released Sprague wheat, a snow-mold resistant semi-dwarf soft white winter wheat.

The station has also had success with hard red winter wheat breeding, and there have been other historical success stories.

Surendra Singh said the station itself encompasses about 350 acres, but a neighboring farmer can add another 1,000 acres to the total.

The Singhs said handling wheat and other crops is their focus. But because this is a research station, much effort goes into writing grants and reports for agricultural journals.

"We are writing papers. We are writing grants. We are hiring students and post-docs to help us and we have two technicians on board," Surendra Singh said. "We do pretty much everything from taking samples to doing the analysis, to the data analysis, to writing papers, and doing presentations across the different extension meetings and then publishing in a peer-reviewed journal."

Surendra Singh said they are mostly published in agronomy journals, such as American Society of Agronomy and Soils Science Society of Agronomy, "and there is a whole laundry list of journals where we publish, depending on the scope of the journal."

He said the focus can shift from agronomy to microbiology depending on what kind of paper it is.

Surendra Singh said the biggest challenge to the dry land farmer is moisture, or the lack of it.

Other than that, like the limitation of most of the agriculture coming out of the Midwest, southeast and northeast, where it rains a lot, and they have better organic matter in the soil and the crop residue goes back into the soils when the crop is harvested, but our moisture limits that.

"We have one crop in two years and we don't have as much organic matter going back into the soil in the form of crop residue," he said.

"Also, we have lower microbial activity," Shikha Singh added. "Our rainfall has an effect on the microbe activity. It's at a slower pace, so it takes longer for us to test all those things."

Shikha Singh said the microbe activity includes bacteria and fungi.

Each year the station has about 10 acres of trials, Shikha Singh said, noting the trials attract researchers from Washington State University's Pullman campus.

"They have their trials here, as well as the lead scientists and everybody comes to have their trials," she said.

Surendra Singh said the station holds field trials in June; typically, about 250 people attend, including farmers, stakeholders and researchers.

"Ultimately the whole production system has to be profitable," Surendra Singh said. "If it is not economically viable, there is no point in doing anything else. The solutions have to be fine tuned so customers can fit within that. Whatever we can do in our capacity to improve that, is our focus."