Is there any method for wheat, like there is SRI for rice?

Question

Is there any method for wheat, like there is SRI for rice?

Answer 1

In much of the world wheat has been grown as a dry land crop, with no transplanting. The main benefit of this is the  low amount of labor involved.

Wheat in fact does not seem to like being in wet land as much as it does in somewhat dry land.

When wheat has an opportunity it will send down its root system 1.2 metres into deeply developed prairie soil. This capability is of course one of the wanted results of SRI for rice.

Wheat can still be inclined to lodge if it gets a lot of nitrate fertilizer. Our dry land cultivation does not have the benefit of blue-green  algae to produce nitrate fertilizer, so we would only have excess nitrate if we apply it in excess.

Our older varieties of wheat do not need as much water to produce well as do many of the green revolution varieties. The down side is that

they do not tolerate as much wet soil.

I should not leave the impression that we can not grow wheat in wet soil. We plant wheat from a winged plane flying over fields that are still slightly flooded. But these fields need to dry down to keep wheat crowns healthy and to avoid lodging.

We might come up with some low external input methods, but we may have to consider whether we would have enough water to grow wet land wheat if we did learn how.

Because we direct seed, and have seeders that can place seed very precisely, we have been able to experiment with many combinations of spacing to get closer to 'optimum' distribution based on expected amount of rainfall. We do plant wheat further apart as we expect less rain, and closer  when there is adequate rain.

We do not wait until wheat has grown and move it about to reduce the  amount of seed needed.

We could do that with mechanical transplanters, but we do not use people power to accomplish that task.

Answer 2

Here is a great basic article link for sustainable agriculture. I won't try to paraphrase it as it would take too long to do it justice and all I could do is rewrite a perfectly good web site. Learn and enjoy!

Answer 3

The system of rice intensification known as SRI is a methodology for increasing the productivity of irrigated rice cultivation by changing the management of plants, soil, water and nutrients. SRI practices lead to healthier, more productive soil and plants by supporting greater root growth and by nurturing the abundance and diversity of soil organisms. The agroecological principles that contribute to SRI effectiveness have good scientific bases. SRI concepts and methods have been successfully adapted to upland unirrigated rice, and they are now being extrapolated to other crops like millet, wheat and sugar cane.

http://ciifad.cornell.edu/sri/