And theres little hope the picture will brighten as a Wheat Quality Council tour of the states crop continues on Wednesday, the crop scouts said.

"Its not quite as good as I expected, its kind of disappointing, I expected every field to be 30 bushels (per acre) plus," said Mike Peel, Extension Agronomist for North Dakota State University (NDSU).

Peel was referring to wheat fields toured late on Tuesday in the area of North Dakota West of the fertile Red River Valley, the key grain growing region of the state. North Dakota this year was expected to produce 210 million bushels of the total US spring wheat crop of 498 million, according to the US Agriculture Departments (USDA) July crop production report.

The Wheat Quality Council tour of US spring wheat fields found surprisingly low tiller counts in many fields surveyed Tuesday. Each wheat tiller or stem produces a wheathead. Crop surveyors count tillers, measure the width of the seeded wheat rows and count the number of wheat kernels per head to arrive at an estimated yield.

Roughly 190 wheat samples were taken Tuesday by 16 separate groups of the 1998 Wheat Quality Council Tour. The average yield per acre was 31.1 bushels, the same as the crop scouts estimated during the first day of the tour last year and below the 36.4 bushels per acre estimated by the group in 1996. The crop scouts, including many crop experts such as Peel, were expecting the yield potential to be a lot greater than last year.

USDA, in its July crop report, estimated North Dakotas per acre yield of spring wheat this year at 31.0 bushels. Last year the states per acre yield was 28.0 bushels, according to USDA.

"From the car the fields look like they would yield a lot more but when you get in the field the tiller count is not there," a crop scout said. "It got dramatically worse the further West we went, overall we were a little disappointed."

"Itwas dry from April through May then we had almost non-stop moisture in June and Im sure that affected yields," Peel said.

There were some ominous warnings about even worse yield prospects as the tour winds its way into North Central North Dakota on Wednesday. Disease rather than low tiller count is expected to be the culprit Wednesday.

Bob Bahm, a crop specialist and consultant from Minot, told crop scouts here overnight Tuesday that spring wheat in the north-central part of the state looks good from the road but wheat diseases have taken a toll on the crop.

"We had a perfect environment for disease in our part of the country, some wheat fields were 50 per cent damaged and some were 30 per cent lost," Bahm said. The wheat tiller count is excellent around Minot, "we had timely rains and had massive leaf development but heavy scab infestation caused up to 50 per cent damage or more," he said.

Scab or head blight is a fungus disease that can occur on all small grain crops, but is most commonly seen inNorth Dakota on spring wheat and durum. Other names for the disease include Fusarium head blight, pink mould, white heads and tombstone scab.

Yield losses from scab are due to sterility of the florets (flowers) and to formation of shriveled kernels that don't weigh very much. Scab not only causes yield and quality losses, but also may be associated with fungal toxins (mycotoxins) that are hazardous to animals, according to the NDSU Extension Service.

Bahm said wet weather in June and early July caused scab infestation then hot and dry weather when the crop was flowering cut yield potential further.

"The heat did take some test weight away but well probably see high proteins," he said. Test weight is the number of lbs per bushel and 60 lbs per bushel is considered an excellent test weight for wheat.

The Wheat Quality Council tour will survey fields in central, north central and northeast North Dakota Wednesday, overnight in Devils Lake, North Dakota, on Wednesday and conclude in eastern North Dakotalate Thursday at NDSU in Fargo.