39 Ate Today? Thank a Farmer. Better Farming | December 2023 BOURBONNAIS EQUIPMENT Sarsfield • 613-835-2623 G.J.’S HARVEST CENTRE INC. Burgessville • 519-424-9374 Milverton • 519-603-8374 HAWLEY’S GARAGE Belleville • 613-969-5525 J&H SALES & SERVICE Chesley • 519-363-3510 J&J EQUIPMENT REPAIR INC Powassan • 705-724-6565 M&P FARM EQUIPMENT Almonte • 613-253-4957 MARK MCCABE TRACTOR SALES Lindsay • 705-799-2868 PROFOTA’S FARM EQUIPMENT Chatham • 519-354-5100 YURKE SALES & SERVICE Comber • 519-687-2209 crops: yield matter$ biosolids, including cover crops. I follow a 4R Nutrient Stewardship plan for all nutrient sources and do regular soil testing every four years to keep track of trends and nutrient balances. In addition, I recommend a good weed control program to track and manage for resistance development, a plant health strategy and an Integrated Pest Management program for insect pests. Nothing rare or outrageous here; they’re all well-known and have been documented to be best management practices over the years. Looking at yield components that drive yield, the number of pods, beans per pod and weight of the beans are where we need to focus to understand how to influence yields. Very little research has been done on these yield components in terms of factors that influence their development and what the critical crop growth stages are. Published research and practical experience shows that yield environments (YE) determine plant populations. Low yield environments (LYE) require higher plant densities to assure there is enough plant and leaf area to intercept as much sunlight to optimize photosynthesis and dry matter yields, considering other limiting factors that come into play in LYE. Medium yield (MYE) and high yield environments (HYE) produce higher yields with lower populations. Often LYE have populations planted at 200K to 275K, MYE at 160K to 200K and HYE planted at as low as 140K to 160K. The determination of yield ranges in LYE, MYE and HYE is somewhat arbitrary. Most company seed guides usually follow a ranking of LYE < 40 bushels per acre, MYE 40 to 55 and HYE 55+ bushels per acre. Individual farmers may rank their own fields differently, especially if 80-bushel yields are obtained on some fields. They might say anything less than 50 bushels is a LYE. Total seed produced correlates to yield more so than seed weight. The plant must produce pods before seeds so the correlation between pods and seeds is similar. In LYE, there is less branching and leaf area, so having sufficient plants to produce enough pods and seeds is required. As we move into MYE and HYE the lower populations have more branching, more flower nodes on the main stem and more pods per plant. Regardless of yield environment, the number of beans per pod changes very little and the seed weight is not highly correlated to yield as one would expect. The thousand seed weight (TSW) in some of our soybean plots ranges from 130 to 180 grams, which equates to 3,400 seeds per pound down to 2,500. We have just begun our soybean plot harvest where we are not only tracking yields but harvest populations, pods per plant, seeds per pod and TSW. We only have a few plots off so far so we’re early in our analysis.
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