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COVID-19 delayed planting and harvest of soybeans in the MU Variety Testing Program.

Mindy Ward, Editor, Missouri Ruralist

January 4, 2021

9 Slides

Dicamba drift is still a problem for University of Missouri researchers trying to yield data from the MU Variety Testing Program. Rather than fight it, they studied it.

“A continued challenge down in the southeast is the volatilization of dicamba,” says Mark Wieberg, the MU senior research specialist responsible for MU’s Variety Testing Program. “At all five of our plots, we experienced herbicide damage from dicamba on the nonresistant varieties. It used to be just a couple of plots down there, but now it's pretty much affected them all.”

This year, Wieberg and his crew took the dicamba-tolerant varieties from both Group 4 and Group 5 and tested those separately in a different plot. “We wanted to see for ourselves just how much dicamba was actually affecting yield,” he says. For the most part, the dicamba-tolerant traits yielded the same across all the locations. Some, like AgriGold G4820RX, reached 83 bushels per acre.

However, farmers may want to focus on the non-dicamba varieties to see how they yield when exposed to herbicide drift.

Wieberg says researchers also are looking at this year’s results as a method to determine which conventional soybean varieties have a natural tolerance to dicamba. “It could really help soybean breeders in the future," he says.

Lackluster results

In the southeast and other areas of the state, Wieberg found soybean yield did not come in as anticipated.

“Yields were not as good as I thought they would be, being as we had pretty adequate rain throughout most of the state through the summer,” he notes.

In the northern region, soybean yields were in the mid- to upper 60s, with a few reaching the low 70s. The central region yields stayed mainly in the upper 60s to mid-70s, with some reaching into the low 80s.

The southwest, where farmers experienced drought conditions, was consistently 5 to 10 bushels lower than the other regions of the state. The plots saw soybean yields as low as 35 bushels per acre and extending only to 67 bushels. On the opposite side, in the southeast, variety yields reached nearly 88 bushels per acre.

COVID-19 affects season

The MU Variety Testing Program experienced a slow start to the planting season as COVID-19 ramped up. “We were down to one planter and one crew for most of the season,” Wieberg says. “We made the decision to go ahead and plant the soybeans when conditions really weren’t what we would consider ideal.”

It was rainy, and the soil temperature was cold during planting. “We were kind of flipping the coin on where to plant next, and what locations were best suited for planting,” Wieberg notes. The wet, cold weather persisted for about 3½ weeks.

Still, he says, the MU Variety Testing Program was completed in a timely manner. “We had to put in a lot of hours,” he notes. COVID-19 did not let up at harvest.

“We had a couple of guys in quarantine,” Wieberg notes. “It made for a little slower harvest. It wasn’t the weather, but mainly because of COVID. There was nothing we could do.”

Wieberg adds the delays in harvest led to a little delay in releasing the MU Variety Testing Program results.

For the top-yielding varieties from each region, click through the photo gallery. Farmers also can visit the website for a full list of soybean varieties in 2020 trials.

Read more about:

Covid 19

About the Author(s)

Mindy Ward

Editor, Missouri Ruralist

Mindy resides on a small farm just outside of Holstein, Mo, about 80 miles southwest of St. Louis.

After graduating from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural journalism, she worked briefly at a public relations firm in Kansas City. Her husband’s career led the couple north to Minnesota.

There, she reported on large-scale production of corn, soybeans, sugar beets, and dairy, as well as, biofuels for The Land. After 10 years, the couple returned to Missouri and she began covering agriculture in the Show-Me State.

“In all my 15 years of writing about agriculture, I have found some of the most progressive thinkers are farmers,” she says. “They are constantly searching for ways to do more with less, improve their land and leave their legacy to the next generation.”

Mindy and her husband, Stacy, together with their daughters, Elisa and Cassidy, operate Showtime Farms in southern Warren County. The family spends a great deal of time caring for and showing Dorset, Oxford and crossbred sheep.

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