Recollections of Running the Variety Testing Program with Aaron Esser

October 28, 2019

Show Notes & Resources Mentioned:

Contact Information:

Contact Aaron Esser via email at aarons@wsu.edu or via phone at (509) 659-3210.

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Episode Transcription:

[ Music ]

Drew Lyon: Hello. Welcome to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. I’m your host, Drew Lyon, and I want to thank you for joining me as we explore the world of small grains production and research at Washington State University. In each episode, I speak with researchers WSU and the USDA-ARS to provide you with insights into the latest research on wheat and barley production. If you enjoy the WSU Wheat Beat podcast do us a favor and subscribe on iTunes or your favorite podcasting app and leave us a review while you’re there so others can find the show too.

[ Music ]

Drew Lyon: My guest today is Aaron Esser. Aaron is with WSU Extension in Lincoln and Adams counties. He has been with WSU for more than 20 years. About 10 years ago, he took over the chair for the WSU Wilke Farm Management Committee. The WSU Wilke Research and Extension Farm is a 340 acre facility on the Eastern edge of Davenport, Washington in the intermediate rainfall zone. In 2018, Aaron accepted interim leadership of the WSU Cereal Variety Testing Program. In August of this year, Dr. Clark Neeley, formerly with Texas A&M University, took over the leadership of the Cereal Variety Testing Program. Hello Aaron.

Aaron Esser: Hello Drew.

Drew Lyon: So you were always a very busy guy, but the last couple of years, year and a half, you’ve been very busy. Tell me a little bit about your experience leading the WSU Variety Testing Program.

Aaron Esser: Yes. It has been quite an interesting and busy last year and a half. But before I get into talking about just the overall experience, I really need to thank a lot of people. You know it was on an interim basis and the only way that allowed me to do it on an interim basis is that Ryan Higginbotham, the predecessor to the program really left it in great shape that really allowed me to kind of step in and, you know, keep it, for no better term, on auto pilot. So that was — I really appreciate what Ryan did to the program before I took it over. And then the technicians. Without their work and support, they really went up and over the top to make sure that this program would continue to succeed. Vidim Jitkov, Andrew Horton, this year Josh Demacon, and their efforts have been tremendous. Without the plant readers, Mike Humphry, Aaron Carter, Kim Campbell, all their support really made it — allowed me to take over this position on an interim basis. And then of course my staff, Dusti Kissler in Adams County, Derek Appel up at the Wilke Farm. Without their effort it really wouldn’t have happened or gone as smooth as it did.

Drew Lyon: It really does take a lot of support people to make these positions work. We tend to be the ones out in front of the public, but they tend to be the ones who make things actually come along.

Aaron Esser: It’s really scary how much you rely on their help and support and how they can make a person look pretty good. I also need to thank Rich Koenig and the administration for all their help and support to carry this program on. And then the Washington Grain Commission, without the funding there really is no program. So I really appreciate the funding for this program.

Drew Lyon: It’s an important service really to the industry and to the growers. So I’m glad we were able to get somebody of your capability in there to fill in until we could get permanent leadership with Dr. Neely.

Aaron Esser: And some of the other experiences, you know, we talked about the “thank yous” and stuff, but it’s really neat to look at how much good material has come along for farmers. You mentioned I’ve been here for 21 years now, Drew, thank you for bringing that up. [Drew chuckles] You know, and I came in in the days of in Adams County, farmers either planted Bruehl or Eltan or Bruehl and Eltan. And those were the choices. And what type of choices the farmers have today? I look in the low rainfall zone there’s 48 different entries that we have in those trials. There’s a lot of good material. You know, you look at those old standard varieties, the Eltan’s and the Madsen’s. Look how far down the list they’ve been pushed, and that’s really a compliment to all the breeders and the work that they’ve been doing to really kick out some really positive genetics.

Drew Lyon: Okay. So the wheat breeding program have been very strong. We’ve had other programs besides WSU now coming to the market, bringing some material. What can you tell us a little bit about how the program works and some of the highlights of what you’ve witnessed. You’ve been associated with these variety testing programs, but not in charge of them for a number of years. So did you see some things differently being in charge that maybe you had not observed before that struck your attention and really made you focus in on some of these aspects of the variety testing program?

Aaron Esser: It’s actually interesting, Drew, just going back on varieties. And I kind of joke about it, but sometimes I don’t joke about it. I felt I actually probably knew the varieties better, especially in my area, better before I took on this role. Once you take on this role, when you look at Walla Walla and those combined studies with Oregon State and the Dayton location, I think we had 198 different entries. [ Drew chuckles ] And when you start talking stripe rust and C. stripe and all these different numbers, falling numbers, and test weights, and proteins, you know, all of a sudden it takes a lot of stuff. And it’s really interesting how quick you can lose track of the five or six varieties you knew really well. And then when you start throwing all those together, it just kind of turns into a big — there’s a lot of numbers involved. And it’s not hard to get some of those numbers tweaked or misplaced or things like that. So that was one of the things that really struck me as interesting. It’s just the amount of data and trying to keep all that data straight and organized and making it available to farmers in a timely manner. It really is a pretty integral process. I had an idea how the variety testing program was tied into these different areas. I knew it was, but I didn’t know how it happened. And when you look at how — you know, when we get the samples in, the varieties come in untreated, seed counts, treat, and everything else so we can treat these varieties fairly in all these locations. And then you’ve got Dr. Chen pulling seed away to run stripe rust and we’re sending samples to the University of Idaho for Hessian fly scoring or people are pulling samples for quality, and people are pulling samples for this. And Dr. Tim Murray takes stuff to run his testing and C. stripe and foot rot resistance to get those numbers that will end up on a chart. So it really is pretty interesting to see how it really does tie into — how integral it ties into so much within the WSU Cereal Grain systems.

Drew Lyon: So do you see yourself next year when you’re no longer the lead of this, you’re back in your role in the counties, approaching the variety testing field day tours maybe differently? What do you see that you might do differently now that you’ve been in charge of this for a little while that maybe you wouldn’t have done if you hadn’t served in this position?

Aaron Esser: I really look forward to working with Dr. Clark Neely and helping him get through some of this and, you know, the field day gauntlets, but what will I be doing different? You know, there’re some things on the scheduling. We had some snafus, you know, when I talk about low life’s of this and things that fall through the cracks. You know the scheduling and we had a couple of miscommunications on what trials are going to be starting first. Are we going to the Springway first. Oh wait, no the organized [inaudible] who happened to me maybe I’m going to say the Spokane or the Spokane Crop Improvement Association. Oh yea, we’re going to go to the legumes first. Well I have the wheat breeders already waiting at the winter wheat plots and no cellphone reception to tell them, hey, change of plans. And so there’s little things like that that really need to be ironed out ahead of time. And that’s one of the things whether it’s my trials or these other trials is to make sure that those details are taken care of beforehand.

Drew Lyon: So can you talk a little bit about some of the highlights or some of the things you really enjoyed about the leadership of the variety testing program?

Aaron Esser: Yea, you know, some of the things I really appreciate and liked about it is the people involved, meaning, you know, I kind of had some relationships with some of the people, but not all of them. Riley Hille from AgriPro Syngenta, Frank Curtis from Limagrain, Lindsay Crigler from WestBred, given an opportunity to meet with those, have a lot more one-on-one discussions. And learning about what they’re doing, where they want to go with their program, as well as our own breeders have a lot more opportunities to talk and discuss with them what’s going on in the greater scheme of things within the wheat industry, I think is extremely important. And that was one of the things I’ll take away as a little bit bigger picture. Weed control, you know. When you start driving south of Adams County and start going towards the border towards Oregon, you really see a lot of changes and a lot of the changes were kind of eye-struck with the amount of Downy Brome stuff that those guys are facing. And that was kind of one of the eye-opening experiences is how bad some of those areas are getting with the amount of Downy Brome coming in, the Italian rye grass. They really have a pretty good fight on their hands down there. I like the area. Traveling around, looking at different areas. The location at Mayview, it’s just beautiful up there. Just the canyons, the river, the animals, the wheat, all looks beautiful. The locations at Walla Walla, Farmington, Fairfield, even St. Andrews, just getting to see some of those unique and cool locations — you know, when you get stuck in one little area, you don’t get an opportunity to experience some of that. So that’s been one of the biggest highlights — the people and the area.

Drew Lyon: So now that you have all this extra time, you’ve stepped back from the leadership and you’re just doing 120% of the job instead of 200%, what are you going to do with all this extra time that you have on your hands?

Aaron Esser: [laughter] That one always makes me chuckle a little bit on time. There’s always something there to fill something in, and fill in a gap. You know, I really look forward to getting some more programs going within the Lincoln-Adams extension area, getting back to, you know, some of that stuff that got dropped, some of the Wilke Farm. I’m really excited about where we’re going with that whole farm and the amount of research going on at that location. And start pushing the envelope a little bit more on the agronomy side of things as well as weed control. You know, that was a heightened alert of traveling across the state to look at the amount of weeds. And even on the way down, I passed a chickpea field and how much dogfennel and mayweeds counts were in that field. We have a lot of issues. There’s nothing that we can’t be tackling. Economics are in the forefront right now, spending more time on enterprise budgeting. I got my degree in ag business, getting back to some of that. And then also I spend a little bit more time working on farm stress and farm stress management, hoping to put together a team to work on some of those issues moving forward.

Drew Lyon: Well I’ve watched you since I’ve been here and I’ve never seen you slow down, so I don’t expect to see a slowdown, but a re-emphasis in some different areas. So I’m sure the farmers and growers in your area will be happy to see you return to that, and I’m sure Clark will be happy to get your support as he gets started in this position.

Aaron Esser: I look forward to helping Clark get up and rolling. I don’t really have a lot of plans to give him a lot of information — I mean, changes I would do — I kind of want him to experience a little bit of it. But I’m really looking forward to bouncing ideas with him. We’ve been bouncing ideas back and forth. So I really look forward to where this program’s going. You know, Ryan started it, I got to kind of just maintain it — or Ryan didn’t start it, but you know, it started a long time ago. But from what Ryan had, I got to maintain it, and I really look forward to what Clark is going to do with it as it moves into the future. There’s going to be a lot of changes. You know, I keep telling him what I’ve seen in the last 20 years, since you brought that up the first time, Drew, the 20 years, and what we’re going to see in the next 10 years, I think is going to be dramatically different. So it’ll be interesting to see, see what happens moving forward.

Drew Lyon: Well I look forward to seeing that as well. Aaron, thanks for coming in and spending some time with me today.

Aaron Esser: Thanks Drew, I appreciate it.

[ Music ]

Drew Lyon: Thanks for joining us and listening to the WSU Wheat Beat podcast. If you like what you hear don’t forget to subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcasting app. If you have questions or topics, you’d like to hear on future episodes please email me at drew.lyon — that’s lyon@wsu.edu –(drew.lyon@wsu.edu). You can find us online at smallgrains.wsu.edu and on Facebook and Twitter @WSUSmallGrains. The WSU Wheat Beat podcast is a production of CAHNRS Communications and the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences at Washington State University. I’m Drew Lyon, we’ll see you next time.