KEMPTVILLE — A one-acre soybean plot at the Winchester Agricultural Research Station yielded more than 100 bu/ac in 2023, an eye-popping figure for field-grown soybeans raised by Ontario researchers affiliated with the University of Guelph. It might be an institutional record.
Holly Byker and Gilles Quesnel oversaw the triple-digit performance, which was highlighted during a Jan. 16 presentation at the Eastern Ontario Crop Conference in Kemptville titled Supersize your Soybean Yield.
“All treatments were replicated four times and the results were very consistent, which gives us confidence in the results,” Quesnel later told Farmers Forum. “We were fortunate to have very little white mould and timely rains. The field also had a great crop rotation, with the two previous crops being cereals.”
Production reached a high of 104.9 bu/ac on sections of the plot fertilized with a combination of urea (87 lb./ac), ammonium sulfate (42 lb./ac) and treated with Delaro Complete fungicide at the R2.5 leaf stage. But even sections left unfertilized and untreated yielded 101.5 bu/ac. The variety was Maizex Viper R2X, which was planted May 11 on 15-inch rows.
The result was a “great yield” but “unlikely” to be an Ontario record, Quesnel said.
OMAFRA soybean specialist Horst Bohner told the conference audience that researchers have been unable to surpass Ontario soybean yields in the “high 80s.”
“We just don’t know how to get more than 90 bu/ac with those varieties at Elora most of the time,” added Bohner.
A more astounding backdrop was the latest world record soybean yield that’s far and away above anything achieved in the province. American farmers Alex Harrell, in southwest Georgia, last August harvested 206 bu/ac on 2.5 acres.
How did he do it? Bohner pointed to the centre-pivot irrigation system on the Georgian operation. “That gives us a little clue,” he observed.
Irrigated soybeans in Ontario get an average yield bump of just 12 %, according to Bohner. “It’s not the 25 or 50 % you might think. When I talk to the guys who irrigate soybeans, they’re often disappointed compared to other (irrigated) crops. You don’t take it to 100 bu/ac.”
Ontario soybean growers averaged 53 bu/ac in 2023, according to AgriCorp, up from the 48 bu/ac 10-year average.
Source : Farmersforum