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April 22, 2022 If I were to ask the question, “What are the two largest management factors that come to mind when you hear soybean management factors?” What would your answer be? For myself, the top two things that come to mind are early planting date (late March and April) and herbicide resistance. Early planting date has arguably been the biggest soybean yield driver because of the increased number of days before the plant starts to flower. This... |
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April 15, 2022 Most every major purchase you make comes with an owner’s manual that tells you the right ways to have a successful run with your item. Your car comes with an owner’s manual, your lawn mower, even your pet rock did as I recall. You get an owner’s manual after you’ve taken possession of the goods, which means it is a separate publication from the product guide you look at prior to purchase. If your soybean seed purchase this year came with an... |
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April 19, 2022 Spring is in the air! The grass is greening up, the songbirds are back serenading us, each day is getting longer, the daily temperature is sort of warming up, and snow is changing to rain (for the most part). But that is the problem, isn’t it? Temps are staying lower than average, and the precipitation does not seem to want to stay away for longer than a 48-hour stretch, at best. In Champaign, the average temperature for the month of... |
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April 11, 2022 I grew up on a small corn and soybean farm in Crawford County, IL. I enjoyed growing up on the farm and helping in the summers. I appreciated the lessons it taught me about making do with what you have and the valuable lessons you can only learn from manual labor. While I decided to leave the family farm for college, I was able to stay connected to agriculture through my education, majoring in Agricultural Engineering at the University of... |
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April 11, 2022 Although some parts of Illinois have started to get beans in the ground, most of us are still waiting for soils to dry out and warm up. Something that should be on our radars in the week or two before planting are soilborne insect pests that may affect our soybeans. Wireworms and white grubs are the two pests of importance in Illinois, and on occasion these insect larvae can cause significant reductions in stands and early season plant vigor... |
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April 05, 2022 In 2018 I received some images on my cell phone. These images were of red crown rot, a soybean disease I had encountered while I was the field crop pathologist at the University of Delaware. The images clearly showed distinctive brick red, pinhead sized “balls” aggregated on the lower stems of the plant. My immediate response to the individual who sent the images was “That’s red crown rot (RCR)- It’s typically a non-issue and routinely... |