Emerson Nafziger Email

Along with the continuing emphasis on getting soybean planted early – in late April to early May – comes the question of soybean maturity rating, and whether early planting benefits fuller- or shorter-season varieties the most.
Planting date
Figure 1 was updated with the 2014 data from our planting date trials in central and northern Illinois. The change compared to the response I showed a year ago is mostly from the large response to delayed planting at Urbana in 2014.…

In April 2014 I wrote on the topic on N fertilizer on soybeans, reporting that our research at the University of Illinois has rarely shown a benefit in yield to applying N fertilizer during the middle part of the season. But it seems that some people, perhaps reacting to testimonials of high yields after using N fertilizer in the high-yield conditions of 2014 remain convinced that adding N fertilizer “makes high yields higher.”
Of course, most producers who got high yields –…

In June with wheat harvest underway, I asked people to send in grain samples so that under an NREC-funded project we could measure P and K levels to try to sharpen up our nutrient removal numbers.
We got a few wheat samples. We also, thanks to the Illinois Soybean Association, found a way to get a good number of soybean samples to measure P and K after they are tested for protein and oil.
Our real need now is to get corn grain samples from the 2014 harvest.…

One of the speakers at the UI Agronomy Day at Urbana this past week was quoted as saying that corn producers had not planted enough plants this year to take advantage of the good growing conditions. The assertion was that 45,000 plants would have been more appropriate than 32,000 plants. Most produces are planting more than 32,000 now on more productive fields. But few are pushing populations into the mid-40,000 range, at least on a lot of acres.…

The “walls” of dark green corn as the crop begins its push to fill grain and make yield is always an inspiring sight, and the 2014 crop is the best I’ve seen at stage of development. It’s been almost this good in June several times, but not at the end of July. The crop condition rating has been stuck at about 80% good to excellent, and this remarkable uniformity is apparent in travels around northern and western Illinois in recent weeks.…

There is some evidence that the “book values” that we have used for many years to calculate the amount of P and K removed by grain during harvest may no longer be accurate for the crops we produce today. The economic and environmental advantages of matching crop removal to replacement with fertilizer nutrients makes it important to have good removal numbers.
With funding from the Nutrient Research & Education Council (NREC) we are starting a new project in 2014 to try to get a better idea for how much nitrogen (N),…

Soybean planting is off to a mediocre start in Illinois, with 26% of the crop planted by May 11, and limited progress with the rain of this past week. Planting will resume in some places this week, but other areas remain wet and it will take some time for soils to dry out. In comparison with recent history this is not yet a serious delay, but as time passes the delay will become a bigger concern.…

As we head into May, Illinois is ahead of most of the rest of the Corn Belt, with 32% of the corn crop planted here by April 27, close to the 33% that was planted by that date averaged over the past 5 years. Only 19% of the US corn crop was planted by April 27, and states to the north and east of Illinois were in single digits. It is wet in much of the Corn Belt now,…