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Now is the time of year to play Monday morning quarterback in discussing what decisions you made going into planting season. While doing this for a pro-football game will do little to no good, evaluating the decisions you made for your crop can put money in your pocket in the future.

One of the biggest things you can easily evaluate is iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC) of soybeans. In a nutshell, this abnormality is caused by a lack of sufficient amounts of iron available to the plant. You often hear about the fields or spots in fields where this typically shows up as being “hot.” When evaluating if this is what is causing your soybean crop to turn yellow or if it’s something else, look for the veins of the leaves to remain green while the areas between the veins will turn chlorotic or yellow.

Soybean varieties vary in their ability to tolerate this stress, and all companies rate varieties for their ability to typically handle it. This picture shows how three different soybean varieties responded to being put in “hot” ground. If you have a field that you think is suffering from this, take a look at some local data or talk to your local sales representative to try and find a bean that can take “the heat” next year.

This article and imageoriginally appeared on Syngenta’s Know More, Grow More blog and has been reposted with permission.

Interested in learning more about IDC? Check out this article from University of Illinois.