Soybean Growers have Chance to Compete in yield Challenge

Jul 07, 2022

By Mr. Robert Nathan Gregory

For the first time, Mississippi’s top soybean growers can compete with their peers and win money for producing the highest yields.

The Mississippi Soybean Promotion Board (MSPB) has announced the launch of the “Grow It. Show It. Win It. Mississippi Soybean Yield Challenge.” Mississippi State University Extension agents will serve as yield contest officials.

“Growers from across the great state of Mississippi will have the opportunity to showcase their outstanding production practices in various soybean yield divisions,” said MSPB communications specialist Bailey Walhood. “The purpose of this challenge is to recognize and offer cash rewards to the top soybean growers in Mississippi and to pass along production information from the contest to soybean producers across the state.”

The four competition divisions include irrigated and nonirrigated categories in the Mississippi Delta region and outside that region. First place winners in each division receive $7,500, while second and third place finishers will win $3,500 and $1,000, respectively.

Source : msstate.edu

Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.