Chuck talks soybeans - when to plant and best varieties for greater yield

Oct 04, 2021

At the 2021 Great Ontario Crop Yield Tour—Farm.com’s six annual event—Chuck Belanger, the Ontario Market Development Agronomist with Maizex Seeds Inc. discussed soybean strategies to achieve a better yield.

According to earlier studies showing soybeans to be hardier than corn, farmers have wondered if it was more prudent to get soybeans into the ground ahead of corn with an earlier planting—but does it really make a difference?

There are, of course, mitigating factors that can determine if a planting is too earlier, such as the weather.

Relating an instance of a customer who planted some of his soybeans on March 24 and planted still more two weeks later and began to see some emergence—but then snow and frost hit, causing him to lose over 33-percent of the 140,000 he wanted.

“But in late August when I went to visit him, that plot had 58.9 bushel—which just floored me,” stated Belanger, “because I thought I’d see 30 to 40 bushel.”

He noted that although there were additional problem issues and had to spray a few extra times, the result was still quite impressive.

To combat the risk of a late snow or frost and to have increased yield, Belanger said the farmer could have planted a higher maturity plant such as a 2.3 or 2.4, rather than the 1.9 he had worked with. That, and upping the population could have allowed him to finish with his original goal of 140,000.

Belanger did acknowledge that the farmer’s success was aided by the variety of soybean plants he grew which still provided him with his decent result.

At the Maizex trial farm in Woodstock, Belanger said his company test-planted two varieties early on April 14, 2021, even though it was still cold.

“We planted the Superior R2X—a 2.7 maturity group—and put it up against Cyclone, a 1.5 maturity group,” explained Belanger but did note a mistake was made. “The Superiors are a great variety and excellent for heavy clay, but in loam (here), it gets growthy—(it has an) elongation of the body and has fewer pods.”

On April 14, pod count on the Superior plants was 36, with 66-percent of the pods three-bean. The Cyclones had 59 pods, about 73-precent of which had three beans per pod.

Another early planting on April 26 showed virtually the same pod count.

However, utilizing the more standard planting date of May 10, just four days later the Superior variety had 53 pods, while 56 pods were on the Cyclone—so about the same as the early planting.

But the later planting was more interesting, said Belanger. “There were more four bean pods” on the Superior, “though hardly any on the Cyclone.”

Conversely, on the two earlier plantings done in April, the Superior variety plants had at least four or five four-bean pods per plant.

The take-away, said Belanger, is that “It shows that you’re not going to gain a bunch of yield by planting early,” but did acknowledge that use of a special variety of soybean plant did create a 6.4 to 7.0 bushel advantage over other plants.

Belanger then took the Crop Yield Tour audience to inspect some of the Maizex soybean trial plantings and discussed differing forage soybean plants like the impressive Mammouth variety.

To contact Chuck Belanger, call 519-401-0715, or email him at chuck@maizex.com or see the Maizex website at www.maizex.com.

View the video below to see all of Belanger’s findings.

Video: Can Gene Editing Give Seeds a Stronger Start?

Reagan Reed has a way of describing his research that might make a plant breeder pause.

“I’m the sort of person who likes to break things to understand them,” he says.

What he breaks are genes involved in seed germination. Reed, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Davis, is investigating whether changing those genes can help seeds establish healthy plants under a wider range of conditions.

Reed recently attended the National Association for Plant Breeding meeting in College Station, Texas, as an NAPB Borlaug Scholar. His work speaks to a question that matters well beyond a research lab: what does it take for a seed to get a crop off to a strong start?

A seed that germinates quickly, alongside the others planted with it, spends less time vulnerable to stresses before seedlings become established.

“If you’re able to bridge that gap between germination to stand establishment, then that’s going to give you the highest probability of having a solid yield that year,” Reed says. “There’s a bunch that can go wrong after that, but it maximises your yield from the start, at least.”

Reed works in Dr. Imtiyaz Khanday’s lab at UC Davis, where his research focuses on seed quality in tomatoes and potatoes. He brings an unusual academic background to the work: at Skidmore College, he studied both biology and Latin.

Reed believes that combination prepared him for research. Translating an ancient text means studying each word, weighing its possible meanings and using context to reach the best interpretation. There is rarely a way to know with complete certainty what an author intended. Science, he says, requires a similar willingness to work through uncertainty.

“Attention to detail and comfortability working with uncertainty,” is how he sums up what Latin taught him.

In the lab, uncertainty can produce a surprise. Reed describes changing one gene and seeing little effect. Changing a second gene also appears to do little. Put both changes in the same genetic background, though, and the result can be substantial.

“I break this gene, nothing really happens. I break this other gene, nothing really happens. I combine them into the same genetic background, and now there’s a massive effect,” he says.

Those interactions matter as researchers gain the ability to edit multiple genes at once. They also complicate any simple account of how a trait works: improving a seed may depend on understanding what several genes do together.

For Reed, the question is whether that knowledge could help seeds germinate reliably when conditions are difficult. Some of the genes he studies prevent germination under certain conditions. That response may serve a plant well in one setting while limiting its usefulness in agriculture. He wants to learn what happens when those genes are changed, and whether the result improves establishment.

Yet a discovery that works in a lab still has a long way to travel before it reaches a field. Reed argues that agricultural biotechnology faces an economic challenge as well as a scientific one. New tools can create value for farmers, he says, but developing them requires a way to support the work in an industry where margins can be thin.

His fellowship with Flagship Pioneering gave him a view across AI, agriculture-related work and human health research. It also reinforced the importance of bringing people with different expertise into the same conversation—a benefit of gatherings such as the NAPB meeting.

“You need to have a team of people with different backgrounds who are willing to work together and approach the same problem in different perspectives and different ways,” he says.

That thinking connects the different parts of Reed’s path. Latin taught him to examine details without expecting a perfect answer. Gene editing lets him test what individual genes do—and what happens when their effects combine. Working with people beyond his own field helps him ask what those findings could become.

He came to agriculture because of its reach: the possibility that work by a small group of researchers could eventually make a difference on a much larger scale. His immediate focus is smaller and more precise. He wants to understand what helps a seed get through its first days and become a healthy plant.