By MIKE CORN

mcorn@dailynews.net

When it comes to wheat, there never is an upside to the unlikely combination of drought and cool temperatures.

Not until this year, that is.

"We're going to have a better crop than I thought," said Joe Martin, wheat breeder at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center at the south edge of Hays.

"Probably not as good as last year," Martin pointed out.

Good rains last week prepared the wheat for the high heat that settled in on the area.

"We certainly don't have any diseases anywhere," he said. "Certainly one of the good things from dry weather."

One state's woes, however, is another's bounty.

Because of the sad state of wheat in Oklahoma and Texas, there's been little for leaf rust spores to grow on.

"There is not a whole lot of wheat growing south of here," Martin said. "That's where most of our rust comes from."

Rust spores ride the wind currents from fields miles away before landing on an unsuspecting farmer's field in Kansas.

"Those spores are pretty hardy," Martin said of leaf rust. "Rust can blow hundreds of hundreds of miles."

There is a bit of barley yellow dwarf in the experimental wheat fields that Martin watches over, but it's not enough to cause many problems.

"The incidence is real low," he said.

As for wheat streak mosaic, the bane of Kansas wheat, there just isn't much of it around.

"That's probably because dry weather kept volunteer (wheat) from growing," Martin said.

Wheat curl mites, the carrier of wheat streak mosaic, need fields of volunteer wheat to host the insects until newly planted wheat can get up and growing.

But it's difficult to raise a crop on so little moisture.

"We've brought this wheat crop a long way on the little moisture that we've had," he said.

Taken together, Martin is happier than he was just 30 days ago, when drought and cool temperatures threatened to jeopardize the crop.

"I think we might see some 50s," he said of the average yields that could be seen in the Hays area.

He's holding out hope that temperatures won't turn too hot too early.

The wheat was able to withstand the high heat of recent days thanks to last week's rains.

"And the nights are still getting fairly cool," he said.

What's still uncertain, however, is the late-planted wheat, crops that couldn't be planted on time because of heavy fall rains.

"It looks better than I thought it would at the time," Martin said.

Wheat planted in the first week of November, he said, has a chance of producing as much as 25 bushels to the acre.

Not great, to be sure.

"But it could have been 10 to 15" bushels," Martin said.

Conditions are good throughout the area, where Martin maintains nurseries.

"We haven't lost any because of drought," he said.

A nursery in Pawnee County was wiped out as a result of hail.

Overall, he said the nursery in Ness County is perhaps the best.

"It just looks like 80-bushel wheat down there," he said of the nursery southwest of Brownell. "They've had something. They tillered out. They look like we did last year. They have to have something extra down there.

"It's beautiful wheat."