Pictures can’t talk, but the picture accompanying this article silently says a lot. You can’t help but focus on the middle of the plant between Steve Gauck’s hands. It’s brimming with pods — several pods per node.

“That’s where you look to get a handle on how productive any one plant will be,” says Gauck, a regional agronomy manager for Beck’s, based near Greensburg, Ind. Beck’s sponsors Soybean Watch ’22.

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“Fred Below at the University of Illinois says up to 70% of the yield from a soybean plant comes from that section of the plant. It’s usually about nodes six through 13,” Gauck says.

This year, the midsection of most plants in the Soybean Watch ’22 field sported nodes close together, each with multiple pods attached. That didn’t happen by accident.

“The field is irrigated, so plants didn’t lack for moisture all season,” Gauck says. “There was a good stand, and the grower applied fungicides. Growing conditions have been favorable, and we haven’t seen much disease. Those are all factors that play into packing yield into that middle part of the plant.”

More mid-plant punch

Here are several factors that contribute to packing as much yield potential into the midsection of the plant as possible:

Short internodes. The shorter the distance between nodes, the more nodes a single plant can develop. And the more nodes on a plant, the higher the odds for more pods per node. Yield is heavily dependent on lots of nodes per plant, Gauck says.

Good growing conditions early in the season give plants the opportunity to develop normally, setting the stage for multiple pods per node later in the season.

Good weed control. If plants sense too much competition from weeds, including volunteer corn, they tend to grow tall and become spindly, rather than stay compact with nodes closer together, Gauck explains. That’s why controlling weeds from the start with residual herbicides is so important.

Minimal stress. Here’s a big key, especially during flowering, Gauck says. If plants are stressed too much by drought or heat, they may abort flowers and pods. Since the Soybean Watch ’22 field was planted relatively late, June 4, due to wet soils earlier, several of the hottest days of the summer were in the books before these plants reached critical stages where most decisions about flower and pod abortion were made.

Disease suppression. Stress from disease can also cause plants to struggle. Minimal disease issues were noted in this field all season. A fungicide application at R3 helped ensure disease would not become a factor affecting this crop. “The whole goal of a fungicide application is to protect yield potential, especially in that middle part of the plant where so much yield comes from,” Gauck says.

Strong finish. Plenty of pods in the middle section of the plant only add up to strong yield potential if each one fills with three to four beans. Mother Nature provided an assist this year with adequate rainfall and moderating temperatures through late August into September. Even so, the operator irrigated whenever the deep soil moisture probe installed in the field indicated soils were ready to fall below desirable levels.