Ratings for the 2024 Illinois soybean crop have been high most of the season, and the August 1 estimate released by NASS is for yield at average 66 bushels per acre. That would be a new record for Illinois, 2 bushels higher than the 2021 yield, and 4.9 bushels higher than the 2024 trendline yield…
Category: Soybean
Stress and the 2024 corn and soybean crops
As high temperatures continue and rainfall remains scarce, many Illinois producers are getting concerned about prospects for the 2024 crops. While it is not very productive to ask ourselves if we should have managed tillage and planting differently, remembering how this year’s crop is faring might inform some of our decisions in the future…
Corn and soybean after a slow start to the 2024 season
Although April-May rainfall exceeded normal amounts in Illinois by up to 50 percent in some areas, and average temperatures have exceeded normal by several degrees, the weather record fails to capture what the 2024 planting season actually looked like…
Notes on soybeans as planting gets underway
While statewide precipitation in March averaged 3.21 inches (89% of normal), we saw a clear north-south gradient within Illinois, with totals ranging from half to an inch above normal in the northern part of Illinois to as much as up to two inches below normal in the southern end of the state…
The 2023 soybean crop as the season winds down
Rainfall in the first two weeks of August recharged soil moisture across much of Illinois, but since then, the combination of low rain amounts and very high temperatures (4.7 to 8.9 degrees above average) brought on some stress during the last week of August…
Wheat and double-crop soybeans
Planted wheat acreage in Illinois increased by 35%, from 650,000 acres in 2022 to 880,000 for the crop to be harvested in 2023. Wheat acreage by county or crop reporting district is not available, but indications are that some of the additional acreage is in parts of central Illinois where wheat acreage has been limited in recent decades. ..
Early-season soybean management in 2023
March was a wet month across much of Illinois. Statewide precipitation averaged 4.48 inches, 1.27 inches above normal. The wet trend continued throughout the first week of April, especially in northern Illinois: more than 1.5 inches of rain fell in some places. NASS reported 1.7 and 2.5 days suitable for fieldwork for the weeks ending April 2 and April 9, respectively….
Evaluating yield response of biological seed treatments in soybean – 2022 Illinois project update
Biological seed treatment is a growing market in the U.S., with several new products being available to growers every year (e.g., arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, N-fixing bacteria, and P-solubilizing microbes). Given high commodity prices, growers are interested in understanding the benefits of applying biological products to the seed…