Crop Scene Investigation - 35: What happened to Nevin's soybean seed?

Sunday, December 4, 2011

by BERNARD TOBIN

When Nevin moved to Canada in the fall of 2010, DeKalb field agronomist Sean Cochrane was happy to lend a helping hand.

Nevin had farmed in Europe and the committed no-tiller was eager to continue the practice on the four farms he had bought in the Pontiac region on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river. But, as Nevin quickly discovered, setting up a farming operation on such short notice presents challenges. And 2011 spring planting conditions – some of the worst in recent memory – didn't help.

"He was in a tough spot," explains Cochrane. Nevin had bought his equipment off the Internet sight unseen. And, while it was listed as "field ready," it had some significant problems that needed to be addressed prior to planting.

Cochrane worked with Nevin to make seed and herbicide recommendations, and also advised him that a spring burndown was needed to make the sod covering all four of the farms easier to penetrate when planting no-till soybeans. A neighbour also helped by cutting the hay on the farms and taking it off after the burndown had taken effect and prior to planting.

When Cochrane saw Nevin's equipment, he was wary of how it would hold up in the tough planting conditions. The land in many cases was poorly drained, which further complicated Nevin's plans to plant no-till. He had to wait for the fields to dry up and couldn't plant until June 15.

But when the planter headed to the field, Cochrane and Nevin were as ready as they could be. "We checked to ensure the planter was in a level position. We also checked the disk diameters and they were adequate."

Seeding depth was also set at the proper level. It took a few tries, but their tests indicated that the air seeder was consistently planting soybeans at the right seed depth – one and a half inches.

Cochrane recalls that, when Nevin started planting soybeans, "the field really wasn't dry enough to run the planter across, but Nevin had things set up and was ready to go, so off he went. He thought he had everything in good running order."

But something went wrong. "Nevin called me up a couple of weeks later and told me there were significant emergence issues." When Cochrane visited the field, he noticed there were quite a few seeds on the top of the ground. The more he scouted, it became obvious that this was the major cause of the poor emergence. "The cotyledons were coming out of the seed and the seed root was trying to make contact with the ground, but it was sitting directly on the sod layer."

Cochrane checked a number of factors that could impact emergence. The germination rate of the seed was very high, so that was not an issue. The seed in the trench was planted at the right depth and, where the emergence was strong, the seed trench was closed sufficiently.

When Cochrane dug up the seed trench in the low-emergence areas, he just couldn't find the seeds. He checked with Nevin and the farmer had indeed planted the right population, but the seed was not in the trench.

It became obvious to Cochrane that Nevin's emergence problem was a direct result of the fact that a high percentage of the seed was scattered on the surface of the field. "The distribution was very random," Cochrane explains. "The seed would be anywhere from three to four inches away from the trench to right beside the trench."

It was time to ask Nevin a few questions. He explained that he did have some problems with the air seeder. While he was planting corn, he had to stop and fix the modulators that controlled the flow of corn. When he moved to soybeans, the pressure monitor broke, but there was no time to stop and fix it. He just made sure the pressure was high enough to ensure that the seeder would not plug up.

Then, it all made sense.

Do you know why Nevin's soybean's seed was sitting on top of the ground? Send your solution to Better Farming at: rirwin@betterfarming.com or by fax to: 613-678-5993.  

 
Correct answers will be pooled and one winner will be drawn for a chance to win a Wireless Weather Station. The correct answer, along with the reasoning followed to reach it, will appear in the next issue of Better Farming. BF