While August rainfall is the “soybean maker,” July rainfall is also important to the podsetting process that sets up yield potential. July rainfall was plentiful overall in Illinois, but varied from an inch or two less than normal in parts of southern Illinois to more than twice normal amounts in western and northwestern Illinois…
Category: Soybean
Nitrogen fertilizer and soybean yield: what we learned from multi-year trials in Illinois
With high yield potential and with seed high in protein (38–40%), the soybean crop requires a lot of N—roughly 4.5 lb of N per bushel, with about 3.5 lb of that removed with the grain. A 60-bushel soybean crop (similar to the current Illinois average) would need approximately 270 lb of N per acre, while an 80-bushel crop, which is not uncommon today, needs to accumulate about 360 lb of N…
Planting and early-season corn and soybean progress – 2025 update
Overall, crop stands are good to very good across most fields, reflecting the relative freedom from heavy rain, flooding, and crusting after planting. By the beginning of June, corn that had been planted in mid-April in northern and west-northwestern Illinois was just beginning to accelerate stem growth – the process that initiates rapid growth and nutrient uptake…
Optimizing corn and soybean seeding rates
Seed costs for corn and soybeans have risen considerably in recent years, along with genetic yield potential and improved ability of planted seeds to emerge and establish productive plants. Here we reviewed seeding rate trials to highlight what works best in Illinois.
Have we missed the best planting window for 2025?
The dry weather had fields in some places dry enough to work and plant around the middle of March, and although NASS did not report any acreage of corn and soybeans planted as of March 30 (they typically use 1% as the threshold), we know that some fields were planted by the end of March. Should more have been planted?
Keeping a Close Eye on the 2024 Soybean Crop
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…
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…