What is Driving Higher Soybean Yields This Year?

by | Oct 23, 2017 | HAT News Feed

What is Driving Higher Soybean Yields This Year?

Soybeans yields across Indiana has been amazing growers and agronomists. What is behind the big bean yields? Several factors, says Dave Pazdernik, agronomist with Bayer Crop Science, ?The soybeans are short and don?t look that good in the field, but there are certainly a lot of beans out there.? Pazdernik attributes part of the surprising yields to early planting, ?Growers who got their soybeans planted in late April or the first week of May realized at additional 10 to 15 bpa this season.? He noted that the increasing use of soybean seed treatments has also helped get crops off to a good healthy start, ?I harvested a plot near Greensburg where he had two varieties. We used ILeVo seed treatment on part of the plot and nothing on the other part. The soybeans with ILeVo yielded on average about 3.5 bpa better.?

Another factor is the genetic improvement that has made, which allow crops to withstand more stress. ?I had one plot on very sandy soil that did not get any rain during August and September, but the Credenz 3601 yielded 50 bpa that really surprised the grower who was expecting about a 30 bpa yield because of the lack of rain,? he stated. Pazdernik added that the lack of disease pressure was also a factor in higher than expected soybean yields. He urged producers to use multiple year data when evaluating crop performance. He also recommended planting a wide variety of maturity dates.

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