The Beaufort County Cooperative Extension hosts its annual Eastern North Carolina Small Grains Field Day next week. This year, extension officials and guests will focus on the problems area farmers have experienced with wheat crops this year.

A large part of the field day will be framed around what happened to this year’s wheat crops, according to Rod Gurganus, county extension director.

“We didn’t get many wheat acres in this year,” Gurganus said. “Instead of doing the traditional (field day), we’re turning it into more of a problem-solving thing. We’re going to minimize time on test plots and focus more on what happened to wheat this year.”

Last month, wheat crops in the county were believed to be experiencing problems from Soilborne Wheat Mosaic Virus, based on an initial assessment by Dr. Ron Heiniger, a cropping system specialist based in Plymouth. Since, however, the problem has been attributed to root rot, caused by fungal disease, Gurganus said.

At the time, the disease was reducing the number of tillers, the seed-bearing part of the wheat plant, which can potentially have a huge effect on yield, and in turn, profit for farmers.

Gurganus said the diseased crops, and issues pertaining to other crops, have been a result of an excess amount of rain and a lack of cold weather over the course of the winter months. Excessive rain, especially a two-week span from Sept. 24-Oct. 4, 2015, created problems for farmers in Beaufort and Hyde counties. Wet field conditions meant wheat was planted later than normal, and wet conditions that continued up until March played a big role in the patches of diseased wheat, according to Gurganus.

“Too much water standing in the fields for an extended period of time, the roots just get diseased,” Gurganus said. “This disease had time to manifest itself.”

Gurganus said several presenters, including Dr. Angela Post, small grains specialist for the N.C. Cooperative Extension, will shed some light on the problems linked to wheat crops this year, as well as what area farmers can do to offset similar issues next year.

Although farmers are at the mercy of the weather, site selection — making sure wheat is planted on well-drained soil — and varietal selection can produce better outcomes, according to Gurganus.

“It’s really just a function of the weather,” Gurganus said. “We don’t know a ton about this disease. We haven’t seen it on this scale before. If there is supposed to be a lot of rain in any year, some varieties may have tendencies to keep this disease from happening. You could think about putting your wheat in certain sites. Aside from site selection and making sure you have well-drained soil that may minimize the chance of this happening, there’s not a whole lot you can do. We might learn from the people coming to talk that there are some things we can do. Right now, we don’t really know so we can’t make too many recommendations.”

The field day event is set for May 12 at 8 a.m. when attendees will head out into the fields with Extension officials and hear presentations about pesticides, fungicides and other techniques that can be implemented to combat various issues related to agriculture. Breakfast will be offered at 7:30 a.m. The event will be held at Haslin Farms of Belhaven.

“I think (participants) will learn about something that is affecting wheat right now,” Gurganus said. “It’s an opportunity to ask questions and get up to speed on something we have been dealing with. We grow a lot of wheat, and you want to be as prepared as you can.”