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.…
Wheat plants are now beginning to head out and flower in parts of southern Illinois. During this critical time of wheat development, wheat becomes susceptible to infection by Fusarium graminearum, the causal agent of Fusarium head blight (FHB; also known as scab) (Fig. 1). This disease can cause reduced grain yield, test weight, and quality. In addition, the fungus can produce toxins that will contaminate grain such as deoxynivalenol (DON; also known as vomitoxin).…
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,…
On April 16 I posted an article http://bulletin.ipm.illinois.edu/?p=1966 on the use of nitrogen fertilizer on soybean, mentioning at the end of the article that this would be a good thing to test in on-farm trials. Here I’ll provide a little background and a brief description of how to go about doing such a trial.
Background: dealing with variability
If there were no variability in yields (or soils) going across a field, a single strip of N fertilizer (or without N while applying N to the rest of the field) would measure the effect.…
Fields days organized by Crop Sciences and Extension at the University of Illinois and by other institutions will focus on crops and pests, with speakers talking about current crop issues along with information from previous research. Each event will offer CEUs for CCAs.
Following is the schedule of crop-related 2014 field days organized by University of Illinois Crop Sciences and by several other institutions.
Event
Date – start time
Food
Contact
Urbana – Weeds
June 25 –…
There has been a great deal of interest in recent months in the idea of using nitrogen fertilizer during the growing season to increase soybean yields. This is somewhat surprising given that there has been so little evidence from published and unpublished reports showing that this practice increases yields, let alone provides a return on the cost of doing this.
Soybean plants in virtually every Illinois field produce nodules when roots are infected by Bradyrhizobium bacteria,…
While dry weather is allowing N application to start in some places in Illinois, the ongoing cool temperatures continue to raise questions about N management this spring.
With help from the Council on Best Management Practices (C-BMP), we are organizing a webinar for Thursday, March 27 at 8:00 AM to address some of these issues, including fate of fall-applied N, use of inhibitors this spring, and how cool soils might affect soil N supply and plant uptake.…
Hearing a lot about cover crops lately but unsure if or how they will work for you? Then plan to attend the Cover Crop Field Day at the University of Illinois Extension Ewing Demonstration Center on March 28, 2014 starting at 10 AM. The field day offers the latest information on cover crops uses – from livestock grazing, soil erosion and compaction reduction, increasing soil organic matter, to increasing future nutrient availability.
Topics for the tour include:
– …
We hope that we’ve seen the last of the snow by now, but both air and soil temperatures remain below average in Illinois heading into the second half of March. According to the Illinois State Water Survey (http://www.isws.illinois.edu/warm/soiltemp.asp) minimum temperatures 4 inches deep under bare soil ranged from the low 30s in northern Illinois to the mid-30s in southern Illinois the morning of March 17, and with some sunshine on that day, reached the upper 40s to low 50w in southern Illinois but did not get above the low 30s in the northern part of the state.…
We have been receiving reports since corn harvest began this fall about an unusual phenomenon: yields of the outside 8 to 24 rows on the south or west edges of corn fields show lower or much lower yields than corn farther into the field. The damage tends to be relatively uniform down or across the field, and is on field edges that border a soybean field, road, ditch, or another short-growing crop (such as forage legumes or grasses) other than corn.…