Tag Archives: variety

New tool for Soybean Variety Trial Data

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David Holshouser, Virginia Tech Extension Soybean Agronomist & Virginia Sykes, University of Tennessee Extension Variety Testing & Agroecology

Which soybean variety is best suited to my region? State variety testing programs provide critical research to help answer that question by evaluating hundreds of soybean varieties every year across multiple locations within a state. But what if we think beyond the bounds of our state borders when it comes to variety evaluation?

While a single state alone provides valuable data, our growing regions often cross state lines. A location in southeastern Virginia may share more similarities to sites in eastern North Carolina than it does to the Northern Piedmont of Virginia. Furthermore, by combining variety testing data across multiple states, we can create a more robust dataset that allows us to better predict which varieties are best suited to specific regions and growing conditions.

Pulling and combining data from select locations within multiple state variety testing programs can be a daunting task. Over the past year, a team of variety testing coordinators from Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia have been working to make that process a lot easier. Through funding from the United Soybean Board and in collaboration with Centrec Consulting Group, LLC, we created a tool that will allow users of variety test data to combine and visualize soybean variety testing data across multiple states in the Mid-South. This new tool is available at https://marketviewdb.centrec.com/?bi=MidSouthVarietyTrials.

In addition to choosing locations, another key component of this database is the ability to filter the results to include only the relative maturities, brands, and herbicide tolerances that you want. It can also let you chose whether to include irrigated and/or non-irrigated, or full-season and/or double-crop sites.  You can also chose the soil textures that you are interested in.

I won’t go into the details of how to use the site in this blog.  But, try it out.  Contact me with questions or comments.

The database currently contains 2018 – 2020 data but will be updated as 2021 soybean variety trial data becomes available. We hope that you find this tool useful. We would value your feedback/suggestions as we continue to refine this product to better meet stakeholder needs. A brief survey can be found at https://utk.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6u5lHEwEOXnXODA.

The database described in this article was developed with support from the United Soybean Board.

Enlist Soybean Varieties for Double-Crop Production Systems

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Although it appears that we can use existing stock of labeled dicamba products (XtendiMax with Vaporgrip Technology, FeXapan, and Engenia) for Xtend soybean varieties, some may want to switch to or use Enlist varieties to control resistant or hard-to-kill weeds in their double-crop system.

Therefore, I’m listing this past year’s results of the performance of Enlist varieties from our variety tests. Note that most of maturity group (MG) 4 varieties. I tested no late-5 or 6 varieties.

Again, the varieties that you have already selected are likely the best-performing ones for your fields; therefore, I do not recommend changing unless you need the Enlist system to control weeds in certain fields.

Note that relative yield is the yield relative to all varieties tested within a relative maturity group (e.g., early-4, late-4, early-5, etc.). Relative yield of 105 means that the variety yielded 5% greater than the average of the entire test.

Should Court Ruling on Dicamba Affect My Seed Choice for Double-Crop Soybean?

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The court ruling yesterday has given a devastating blow to farmers that are depending on the Roundup Ready 2 Xtend herbicide program for their soybean. There seems to be much discussion regarding clarification of this ruling, including when the ruling can take effect and a possible “existing stocks” provision.

Until the ambiguity around the decision is clarified, it’s worth thinking about seed choice. Assuming there is little that can be done about soybean already planted and growing other than alter your postemergence tank-mixes, you may have an opportunity to switch varieties for the upcoming double-crop soybean planting.

First and most important, do not change your variety selection if you have weeds that can be controlled without the addition of labeled dicamba products (Enginia, FeXapan, Xtendimax) to your herbicide program. The varieties that your have already selected are most likely to be best for your farm and will maximize your yield.

However, if you must add dicamba to your glyphosate to kill glyphosate-resistant marestail (hopefully you’ll take care of this weed before you plant), Palmer amaranth, or common ragweed, then you have some options with Liberty-Link, Enlist, Liberty-Link GT27, or a few other varieties that have stacked the GT and LL traits.

Like all herbicide-resistant traits, there are good varieties and there are some that don’t yield so well. I suggest that you refer to our Virginia Soybean Performance Tests 2019 or other good private and public resources to see how these have performed.

Improving Your Soybean Variety Selection Decisions – What maturity is best?

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Variety selection continues to be one of the most important decisions that we can make.  It is also one of the first steps to take that insure success.  It’s a hard choice because there are so many varieties available.  Still, this choice is one that will affect your profitability throughout the year.

Soybean yields in our variety tests have increased by an average of 0.4 bushels per year over the last 30 years.  Some of this increase is due to better varieties, some is due to better management.  In those tests, the highest and lowest yielding varieties varied by 20% or more (8-10 bushels).  It is therefore clear that making the wrong choice will seriously impact next year’s soybean crop.  Unfortunately, environment (rainfall, temperature, soil type, field, etc.) affects yield variation more than variety – there is always lots of year-to-year and site-to-site variation.  Still, each variety has specific strengths and weaknesses that make it more or less suited for any given situation.

Putting the Right Variety in the Right Field

With all this variation, it is very important that you place the right variety in the right field.  This will be influenced by 1) planting full-season or double-crop; 2) maturity; 3)herbicide tolerance; 4) disease and/or nematode tolerance; and finally 5) yield potential.  There are also a number of other factors that differentiate varieties such  as shattering and lodging susceptibility, height, branching ability (thin vs. bushy), seed size, seeds/pod, protein and oil content, other specific traits, etc.), but these will rarely affect your bottom line.   Although all of the top five things I listed are important, yield potential is clearly what is of most interest.  However, if you do not pay attention to numbers 1 through 4 first, your yield potential can be low.

To cover all of the things that make variety selection important would take more words than this blog will allow, so we will first focus on the choosing the right maturity.

Relative Maturity Choice: Spreading Out Environmental Risk

First, I should say something about early planting of an early-maturing variety.  I define this as planting in April or early May a variety that is about one full maturity group earlier than the maturity that is most adapted, based on historical data, for your area.  First, early-planted early-maturing varieties will always have a greater risk of poor quality seed.  The seed of these varieties are maturing during September and early October, when the weather is relatively warmer.  Warm and wet weather are perfect conditions for seed decay.  2018 has been one of the worse years for this, primarily due to excessive rainfall and much warmer September temperatures.  To the right is an example of a maturity group (MG) 3 soybean planted in April in Madison County (MG 4 is the most adapted maturity for this area).  Clearly, you don’t want to end up with this.  While early maturing varieties have their advantages, their associated risks should keep the percentage of acres planted to a minimum.

On the other hand, do not keeping all varieties in a tight maturity range.  The performance of varieties within a certain maturity range will almost always depend the environment that they experience during pod and seed fill.  If conditions are good (adequate rainfall, moderate temperatures, good soils) during that time, yields will be high.  Unfortunately, the weather cannot be predicted in our humid southeastern U.S. environment.  While late-July and early-August are generally our hottest and driest times of the year, we have just as good of a chance of going through a hot and dry period in June as well as July as well as August, and sometimes in September.          Still, on average, certain relative maturity ranges yield more than others in the south central part of Virginia.  Below are the average yield balance (no. of bushels/acre greater or less than average) of a range of soybean maturities tested in our full-season variety tests over the last 10 years, separated by location.

I’ll use our Southern Piedmont location (Blackstone) as an example of a location that shows the greatest yield gap between the earliest and latest varieties (nearly 15 bushels!).  This is likely due that area typically experiencing the more stress (hot and dry) from late July through August than other regions.

Similar but on the opposite end of the spectrum, MG 3 and 4 varieties work best at the Northern Piedmont (Orange) location.  Maturity group 5 varieties generally not as adapted in that northerly environment.

The northern and southern Coastal Plain sites (Warsaw and Suffolk) behave similarly to Blackstone – MG 5 outperform MG 4 varieties; but the yield gap between relative maturities is not as wide.

Our Eastern Shore location does not follow the same trend of MG 5’s being the highest average yielding varieties as one moves south and east.

Note that maturity group (MG) 5 varieties relatively better in the more eastern and southern locations of Virginia’s mainland, while MG 4 varieties tend to do better in our most northwestern location (Orange) and on the Eastern Shore (Painter).  While MG 3’s don’t yield as well, the group 4’s are the highest yielding.  Why?  I attribute it to two things: yield potential and temperature.  In general, this site has over time been one of our highest yielding sites.  Although rainfall patterns are similar to other locations in Virginia, it is our coolest location (and there is usually a breeze) – both likely a water effect.  Therefore, the site experiences less stress.  So, pushing the critical pod- and seed-filling stages slightly earlier in the year are not as problematic.

So, should you stick only with maturities that perform best on average?  Not necessarily.  Using Blackstone as an example, note that although the late-group 4 varieties yield less than MG 5’s on average, they yield much better than earlier 4’s.  And late-4’s yield just as well as 5’s in Orange and Suffolk.  I stress that these are averages – 10-year averages of all varieties within those relative maturity ranges.  Is it possible for the MG 4 varieties to yield more than the 5’s in Blackstone or Warsaw?  Is it possible for MG 5’s to yield more in Painter?  Yes!  It just does not happen as often.

We took that same data and calculated the probabilities, not absolute yields, of obtaining similar or greater yields of all relative maturity groupings tested.  The results are below.

Once again, to use the Blackstone data as an example, we can see that growing a late-MG 5 variety will yield at least as much as all of the other relative maturities 90% of the time (bar height).  In addition, there is a 50 to 60% chance (height of the hatched portion of the bar) that the 5’s will yield significantly more than the 4’s.  So, it seems that you will never go wrong with those varieties, correct?  You’ll probably (~80% chance) not go wrong by growing a large percentage of those varieties, but should you should you only plant MG 5’s?  I suggest that you do not grow only MG 5 varieties.  There is still a 10 to 20% chance that the 5’s will yield less than the other maturities.  Plus, there is a 60% chance that late MG 4 varieties will yield just as much as MG 5 varieties (and a 30% chance that they will yield more).

Painter is another good example.  Although there is a yield gap between the 4’s and 5’s, there is a 50 to 70% chance that MG 5 will yield as well as MG 4 varieties.  And there is a 30% chance that they will yield more!  You can use the same thought process for the other locations.

Below are the same graphs for double-crop tests.The Right Mix of Maturity Groups in Virginia.  So, what is the right mix of maturity groups?  I suggest the following:

Southern Piedmont

  • Plant 60 to 80% of your land to MG 5 varieties. We have also found that later maturities generally do better on our more droughty soils, so take that into consideration if possible.
  • Plant 20 to 30 % to late-MG 4 varieties (4.7-4.9). If possible, plant these on your higher-yielding soils.  We have found that this range of maturities have our greatest yield potential throughout Virginia if the weather cooperates.
  • Plant 0 to 20 % to mid-MG 4 varieties. These are risky, especially on droughty soils or in double-crop settings.  It is highly likely that these varieties will experience some (or a lot) of stress during the seed and pod fill stages.  Plus, seed quality will almost always be poorer than other maturities.  If you do grow these, harvest as soon as possible as seed quality will continue to degrade with time.  Don’t plant these in April or early May. This places the most critical times of development (pod and seed fill) during late-July and August.  And seed quality will be even worse since they will likely mature during the warmer part of the year.  Still, yield potential can occasionally be quite high.

Southern Coastal Plain (same comments apply regarding droughty soils and seed quality)

  • Plant 30 to 60% of your land to MG 5 varieties.
  • Plant 30 to 50 % to late-MG 4 varieties (4.7-4.9).
  • Plant 10 to 20 % to early- and mid-MG 4 varieties.

Northern Coastal Plain (same comments apply regarding droughty soils and seed quality)

  • Plant 30 to 60% of your land to MG 5 varieties. In double-crop systems, reduce that percentage to 30 to 50%.
  • Plant 30 to 50 % to MG 4 varieties (4.7-4.9). In double-crop systems, increase that to 50 to 70% late-4’s and plant 10-20% early-or mid-4’s.
  • Plant 0 to 20 % to late-MG 3 varieties.

Eastern Shore (same comments apply regarding droughty soils and seed quality)

  • Plant 20 to 40% of your land to MG 5 varieties.
  • Plant 50 to 70 % to late-MG 4 varieties (4.7-4.9).
  • Plant 10 to 20 % to early- and mid-MG 4 varieties. Plant 0-10% in double-crop.
  • Plant 10 to 20% to late-MG 3 varieties.

Northern Piedmont (same comments apply regarding droughty soils and seed quality)

  • Plant 0 to 20% of your land to MG 5 varieties. Don’t plant MG 5’s double-crop.
  • Plant 60 to 80 % to MG 4 varieties (4.7-4.9).
  • Plant 10 to 20 % to mid- or late-MG 3 varieties.

The proportion of MG 4 and 5 will ultimately depend on your risk tolerance.  Note that as you move west and north, the risk of an early frost is greater; therefore, growing lots of late-maturing varieties may not be a great idea, especially double-crop, and the probability of slightly earlier maturities doing better is greater.

Hopefully, this will give you some guidance in choosing your maturities within the next few weeks.

IMPORTANT:  Keep in mind that the yields and yield balances shown are an average of all varieties in those relative maturity groupings.  This does not mean that every variety in those grouping perform in this manner on every field.  Make sure that you first the variety that meets your match your field’s pest management needs; then, select a high-yielding variety within that relative maturity range.

 

Virginia Soybean Yield Contest Results Announced

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2017 was a great year to grow soybean.  We set a new record for average soybean yields in Virginia and most were generally happy with their soybean crop.

Although we did not break Keith Brankley’s 2012 Virginia record of 109 bushels per acre (and this was not irrigated), we did induct 3 new members into the 100-bushel club with the help of irrigation.  We also inducted 3 new members into the 90-bushel club and 4 new members into the 80-bushel club without the aid of irrigation.

I invite you to the Virginia Grain and Soybean Conference to share in their success and maybe get a few pointers on how to be the first inductee into the 110-bushel (or greater) club in 2018.

Below are a list of winners:

Double-Crop Contest

3rd place – Patti Craun with 66.8 bu/A using Pioneer P46T30X

2nd place – Kevin Craun with 67.2 bu/A using Pioneer P46T30X

1st place – Steve Smith with 72.3 bu/A using Channel 4916RX/SR

Full-Season Contest

3rd place – Michael Downing with 92.6 bu/A using Asgrow AG45X6

2nd place – Stephen Ellis with 93.8 bu/A using Axis 3916NR

1st place – Curtis Packett with 96.2 bu/A using Asgrow AG4135

Irrigated Contest

3rd place – Steve Hudson with 100.8 bu/A using Channel 4916R2X/SR

2nd place – Jonathan Hudson with 101.5 bu/A using Channel 4916R2X/SR

1st place – Frank Hula with 104.2 bu/A using Local Seed Co. TS3959R2S

Good Soybean Yields in Virginia for 2017

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It was a challenging harvest season, but we harvested our last plot today.  Yields were very good, ranging from the upper 40’s to upper 70’s.  Across all maturity groups in our variety tests, full-season yields averaged 63.3 bushels/acre and double-crop averaged 60.0 bushels/acre.

Virginia soybean are now predicted to average 45 bushels/acre, a new state record.  We are just shy of the predicted national average.  Over the last 20 years, we have been increasing yields at a rate of 0.6 bushels/acre per year.  This is quite a feat!  While better genetics are part of this increase, I think that most of the increase is coming from better overall management of the crop.  This management includes long term (e.g., better soil quality, etc.) and short term (e.g., timely planting, etc.). 

Of course, we cannot forget the weather.  It was relatively cool during the critical pod and seed development stages.  More importantly, rain came at the right time.

2017 Virginia Soybean Variety Results

Below are some preliminary results to our soybean variety tests.  I caution you that these are preliminary – some changes could still be made.  But, I feel pretty good about the data presented here.  Some double-crop data from Orange and Painter is still outstanding due to variability.  We will be trying to determine its cause and have those data available ASAP.

Workhorses, Racehorses, and Quarter horses

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Today is the first day in 2 weeks that we’ve been able to harvest due to weather and a combine breakdown.  So, we are not that much farther along in getting variety test data to you than we were last week.  However, I hope to get out some preliminary data by Thanksgiving.

Last week, I indicated that certain relative maturities do better in some parts of Virginia than others.  This week, I I’ll get a little more specific and discuss choosing the best variety for a given yield potential.

First and foremost, I will continue to emphasize that variety selection should be based on multi-year multi-site data.  Basing your selection on a single test (maybe closest to you) and single year is a recipe for failure.  However, I don’t necessarily recommend always choosing a variety based on average yields over site-years – although a very good place to start.  This may seem a little contradictory, but let me explain.

Certain varieties do better under high-yielding environments.  I like to call these “racehorse” varieties.  Choose such a variety if you want to win a yield contest.  Other varieties may yield more than others under stressful conditions.  I refer to these as “workhorses”.  And there are some that tend to do well, regardless of the yield potential – I’ll call these “quarter horses” (quarter horses can run very fast for short distances and you can still ride them long distances over quite rugged terrain).

Last year, we analyzed 5 years of variety test data and classified all varieties that we tested as one of the above.  Examples of our results are shown below. The graphs represent the yield of a single variety versus the yield of all varieties tested at that site and year.  Each symbol represents a different site-year.

To summarize, the vast majority of varieties are neither racehorses or workhorses; they perform equally in all yield environments.  So, averages will work just fine in most cases.  But, if you know you have a great- or poor yielding soil or if you are irrigating, then you may want to look into those varieties that fit that situation.

We have all of these data in an excel spreadsheet.  If interested, let me know; I’ll be happy to share upon request.