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VNS Northern Rye vs. Yankee Rye: What's the Difference?

Watch a side-by-side comparison of VNS Northern Rye and Yankee Rye in our test plot. You'll see how these varieties differ in leaf size, stem structure, and lodging resistance—and why Yankee Rye might work better if you're planning to roller crimp.

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0:03 Next to that we have here, well I'll start with the one on my right over here. This is what we call just V&S northern rye. It is a variety not stated—we don't know exactly what.

0:17 Variety it is. It's probably most commonly what people use if they're not specifically looking for a variety. As you can see, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's a great cover crop.

0:28 It's a great wheat suppressor. It's not gonna head out and get mature quite as quick as the Elbon or the Aroostook, but it's probably not too far behind. The other thing that we really like about El

0:41 Bond is seed size. El behind has probably the smallest seed size of any of the prized. This is a little bit larger seeded stop. So this is just kind of common VNS northern winter rye.

0:54 Is one that we've started growing in the last couple of years here and we call it Yankee rye. It's one that we've been using and it's got some characteristics that we think are going to fit.

1:05 Pretty well Dale, won't you talk about that a little bit? Well, I think you can see that if you compare this to the El bond, it just seems to be a lot, lot leaf here. The leaves seem to be a little.

1:19 Bigger, there seems to be more leaves. We think that this is going to be kind of intermediate between triticale and rye. I think it's got a little bigger stem, a little more of a hollow.

1:45 The rain that we had, it's kind of laid it over a little bit more. I think it's that bigger, more hollow stem. It doesn't split right. It's kind of like it's very wiry, very tough.

1:55 Doesn't go down very easy but this much like you said it's a little more like triticale. It's not triticale but it has a few more characteristics like that yeah it seems.

2:06 To be leaf here, I think it's going to be able to forage in the long run that won't be quite as early as the elbow. So I think it's gonna fit that gap between turnkey this stuff coming.

2:21 Here we could have, we've got seven or eight hundred acres of this under production in South Dakota, so we should have a decent supply of this. We've just kind of been testing it up until this year.

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