Bag to Bin

Combines are rolling and harvest is here, which means it’s already time to start thinking about seed decisions for next year! As you’re in the combine, it is a convenient time to start looking at how hybrids and varieties performed yield-wise. This can be a good base for how you start your decision process, but it is also important to remember other factors that go into yield. The 2021 growing season was an adverse year, which may be reflected in your monitor. Planting conditions were less than ideal, with the majority being in cool, dry soils. The planting timeframe was different for many operations which led to varying emergence and stand results. These seeds went into dry soils and for the most part, stayed that way for most of their growing season.

This environment created the perfect storm for corn rootworm larvae to flourish. We didn’t have a harsh winter to kill many off and or a wet spring to drown them out. We saw extremely high levels of pressure in some areas, especially in corn-on-corn acres. However, even rotated soybean-corn acres, there was still a presence of these pests. Keeping that in mind, a below-ground traited hybrid is going to be essential for your operation if you plan on doing continuous corn for 2022. Products like a SmarStax, Qrome, or Duracade will provide you will below-ground protection to combat corn rootworm. Brevant’s 98-day B98R95Q, Dekalb’s 106-day 56-65SS, and Brevant’s 101-day B01Z88Q are three products we have in plots this year that will be great considerations for corn-on-corn acres. Placement for all three of those products is going to be on the more productive acre with heavier soils. Adding an insecticide application along with these products will help mitigate the pressure of insects.

This year we are also seeing physical benefits of fungicide applications. With the dry season, fungicide has helped with late-season plant health and intactness. The applications helped the plants use water more efficiently in-season and have led to green plants later into the season to stay alive and take advantage of later rain events. Hybrids B98R95AM and B08C92AML both have a high response to fungicide application based on WinField United’s Answer Plot data.

Soybean decisions for 2022 can be heavily relied upon which herbicide program best fits your operation. Neighboring fields and spraying timeframes are considerations to keep in mind when making your decision. We are excited to get harvest data for our 3 soybean test plots that have 20 different varieties ranging from 1.3 to 2.3 maturity. These plots have varieties from Enlist, Liberty, and Xtendflex trait platforms.