Soybean crop is 'all over the board' says specialist

Thursday, July 28, 2011

by SUSAN MANN

There’s a huge variation in the progress of this year’s 2.6 million acre soybean crop, says Ontario agriculture ministry soybean specialist Horst Bohner.

Some fields that were planted in good time and received timely showers are looking quite nice. But the plants are suffering in other fields where they were planted into tougher conditions later in the season and then hit with the extreme dryness.

“It’s all over the board,” he says.

Extreme southwestern Ontario looks worse than south central Ontario. The Niagara region looks tough while eastern and northern Ontario look better because they had more showers. But Bohner says there could be two fields beside each other in the same area with one looking good and the other looking bad. “The roots just weren’t able to get down before they dried out.”

In the fields where the plants are in tough shape, Bohner says a combination of factors caused that including the wet spring delaying planting. Then the seeds weren’t planted into ideal conditions with the soil’s subsurface being wetter than farmers would like to see it.

“You’ve got a slow start and root development is restricted,” he says, noting there was soil crusting. The plants are smaller and there are fewer plants per acre.

After getting off to a slow start in many fields, the soybean crop was then hit by extreme dryness. On heavy clays, plants have a hard time growing vigorously once things get dry.

Bohner says what the crop needs now is rain and noted showers were predicted for Wednesday. “A lot of those tougher looking fields would really turn around relatively quickly with one good shower.”

Soybeans are flowering now with some entering the R3 or early pod set stage and the rain is needed to set the pods. Depending on the variety and when they were planted, beans will continue to flower right up to the third week of August.

With a lot of the growing season left, there’s still hope the crop can be turned around. “If we could just get one decent shower over the next while things would look a lot more promising than they do today,” he says. BF