Listen to this week’s Tune In for Top Tips on KTIC Radio:
This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist with Nebraska Extension for Dodge and Washington counties. Last time our Tune In for Top Tips was to turn down your soybean seeding rate, not your radio. This week’s Tune In for Top Tips is to diversify soybean relative maturities and diminish risk.
At the 2017 Nebraska Cover Crop Conference (view recordings) in February with a crowd nearly 300 people, I discussed the newest data on the relationship between soybean relative maturity and yield in eastern Nebraska. A robust data set from FIRST, farmers’ independent research of seed technologies, trials from 2012 through 2016 in Northeast Nebraska showed that growers can select top producing varieties across a range of relative maturities without sacrificing yield. Of course at some locations in certain years there was an advantage to fuller season varieties, but at others there was an advantage to shorter season varieties. Again in Northeast Nebraska, data from FIRST trials averaged across approximate 58 different varieties per year evaluated at four locations per year and over 5 year period from 2012 to 2016, reveals that we can maintain top yields and diminish risk against the short-term weather patterns by planting top performing varieties ranging from a 2.6 to a 3.4 relative maturity. Don’t let one bad week in August bring your soybean yields down by planting one or two relative maturities on your farm in 2017.
Therefore, Tune In for Top Tips this week is to diversify soybean relative maturities and diminish risk. To listen to this radio message again and to get more information about these trends for southeast Nebraska, visit our local website at croptechcafe.org or give me a call at 727-2775. Know your crop, know your tech, know your bottom line. This is Dr. Nathan Mueller, your local agronomist for Nebraska Extension on KTIC radio.
