USDA: 2025 Acreage Up 38% Over Last Year
USDA’s June 30-released plantings report placed the area planted to sunflower in 2025 at 998,000 acres, up 38% from 2024. Compared with last year, planted acreage in five of the eight major sunflower producing states increased in 2025, with four of the states up by more than 40%. The state with the largest increase in acreage from last year is North Dakota, where planted sunflower area increased 173,000 acres compared with last year.
Planted area of oil-type varieties, at 881,000 acres, is up 48% from last year’s record low. Compared with last year, planted area of oil-type varieties is up more than 80% in Minnesota, North Dakota and Texas.
Sunflower area planted to nonoil varieties, estimated at 117,000 acres in the June USDA report, is down 8% from 2024’s level. Compared with last year, growers in Colorado, Minnesota and North Dakota reported acreage declines of 10% or more in nonoil varieties. The largest decrease occurred in North Dakota, where planted acreage decreased by 17,000 acres from the 2024 level.
Harvested area for sunflower was forecast at 957,700 acres in the June report, which would represent an increase of 40% from last year.
Senta Kyzer Awarded 2025 Stern Scholarship
Senta Kyzer is the recipient of the 2025 Curtis Stern Memorial Scholarship. She received her award in late June during the annual National Sunflower Association Summer Seminar in Bismarck, N.D.
Kyzer grew up in Kronach, a small town in the north of Bavaria, Germany. She completed her bachelor’s degree in biology at Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg in December 2021 and then continued with a master’s in cell and molecular biology at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen. As part of her master’s, she completed a three-month internship at North Dakota State University, working at the USDA-Agricultural Research Service in the Sunflower Research Unit. During this internship. she helped assemble a new sunflower genome, including phased haplotypes, using PacBio Revio HiFi reads, Illumina short reads, and Omni-C libraries. That work focused on identifying traits related to anthocyanin production and male fertility on chromosome 11.
The internship led her to the decision to return to Fargo and continue her work with sunflower. She started her Ph.D program at NDSU in phenomics, genomics and bioinformatics in Spring 2025. Kyzer is planning to expand the sunflower genome assembly project to include at least 18 more sunflower lines.
2025 Research Forum Presentations Online
Reminder: Presentations from the 2025 NSA Sunflower Research Forum are available online. PowerPoint presentations of all the reports given at the Forum can be found on the NSA website under the “research” tab. Visit https://www.sunflowernsa.com/Research/Research-Forum-PowerPoint-Presentations-Since-2008/2025/ to see this year’s presentations.
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, North Dakota State University, South Dakota State University and Texas A&M presented papers and posters on their work. For a historical look, all Forum presentations dating back to 2008 are available on the NSA website as well.
Magazine Story Suggestions Welcomed
With another sunflower production season now moving toward the finish line, the National Sunflower Association staff looks toward the next publishing season of The Sunflower magazine — which has been an industry fixture since 1975. (See the article on page 14.)
“Our goal with the magazine is to provide news and articles of real interest and use to our readership — which consists mainly of sunflower producers around the U.S. and Canada,” says John Sandbakken, NSA executive director and magazine editor. “Our ongoing objective is to provide timely, useful information, and we always welcome readers’ suggestions for potential topics or persons to interview for articles.”
Story suggestions for upcoming issues can be submitted to johns@sunflowernsa.com.