Ancient Grains: Spelt

This project was designed to evaluate some potential winter and spring varieties of spelt in an organic system. Studies were conducted for three years at locations in New York and Pennsylvania and North Dakota.

These data are summarized from the original organic variety reports at Cornell University Small Grains Cultivar Testing website. This work was supported by National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA award #2011-51300-30697.

Our winter combined initial trials consisted of four winter spelt varieties (Table 1) and were later expanded to include six varieties. In these trials, Maverick ranked the highest for yield and was also the shortest and earliest. Maverick is widely used for flour in our region as well. It also has a unique characteristic of producing a crop with some of the seeds already dehulled.

Table 1. 2012-2015 winter spelt performance at Freeville (FV), NY, Rock Springs (PA), PA and Willsboro (WB), NY.

¹Yield = (bu/ac @28lbs/bu)
²Bushel weight = (lbs/bu)

The results of our trials at Penn State over the project are shown in Table 2. In most years yields averaged 90 to 100 bu/acre for the top lines. These tests included two additional varieties, Comet and Sungold. Maverick, Comet and Sungold were high yielding in these trials. Sungold often yielded slightly more that Maverick and Maverick and Comet were similiar in 2 of the 3 years. Sungold was a bit later in maturity and similar in height to Maverick. Comet was similar in maturity but shorter than Maverick. All three of these lines are available from French's Hybrids. More details on their characteristics can be found on the French's Hybrids website.

Table 2. Winter spelt performance during 2013 to 2015 at Rock Springs, Pennsylvania.

¹Yield = (bu/ac @28lbs/bu)
²Test = (Bu/ac)

We also tested some spring spelt lines, in collaboration with colleagues at both Cornell (Freeville, NY) and three locations in North Dakota, North Dakota State University, Cathay, ND and Robinson, ND (Table 3). Spring spelt lines were planted in early April, and topdressed with pelletized poultry manure at 70 lb N/acre. Spring spelts performed much better in North Dakota than in New York and Pennsylvania. As with wheat, spring spelt crops are often less well adapted than winter spelts and often will yield much less. At the Penn State location (Table 4), the Forage Spelt variety tended to be the one of the tallest and also had the highest yields. Over all locations, however, the CDC Zorba variety tended to have the highest yields, however. Tall and early would likely be good characteristics in this environment where heat stress and weeds in spring grains can be a problem.

Table 3. Spring spelt performance during 2012-2015 at Freeville (FV), NY, Rock Springs (PA), PA North Dakota State University (NDSU), Cathay(ND Cath), ND and Robinson(NDRob), ND.

¹Yield = (bu/ac @28lbs/bu)
²Bushel weight = (lbs/bu)

Table 4. Spring spelt performance during 2013 -2014 in the Penn State trials located at Rock Springs, PA.

¹Yield = (bu/ac @28lbs/bu)
²Bushel weight = (lbs/bu)