Picking The Right Seed For #PLANT2025

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The Seed Selection Test

By Paul Hermans

With harvest wrapped up and the new calendar year beginning, the most important task that remains is picking the right variety/hybrid for the 2025 growing season.

In years past, this was a straightforward process; yield was the key factor that most growers looked at. Fast forward to the 2025 growing season and a lot of other factors come into play. Factors like herbicide resistance and weed management, disease control, economics, and yes, still on top, yield, are part of the decision-making process. At the end of the day, looking at all these factors will provide you with the best varieties/hybrids for next year’s growing season.

I will use soybeans as my example of considerations to look at when picking a soybean variety. Keep in mind that the same principles hold true for corn and other crops.

In many geographies across Eastern Canada, various weeds are resistant to many herbicides on the market. Knowing what weeds are resistant to specific chemistries is vital in ensuring herbicide traits will work on your farm. Consider multiple modes of action traits when picking your seed. Multiple modes of action allow you to have variable tools in the toolbox to spray different herbicide programs on different fields. Gone are the days of a simple one-pass, one herbicide program to actively clean up weeds.

Knowing the weed spectrum for each field is critical in picking a variety and herbicide program. An example of a multiple mode of action trait for soybeans would be Enlist E3. It has three specific herbicide traits that can be used on your farm as tools in the toolbox: Glyphosate, glufosinate and 2,4-D choline. Combined with a programs approach of using a residual post/pre-emerge strengthens not only weed control and yield outcome but will ensure longevity of herbicide traits for growers in the future.

In my specific geography, disease management is becoming increasingly important. Over the last 30 years the landscape has changed from a livestock diverse crop rotation one to more of a soybean-corn rotation. Over the years, white mould has been the No. 1 disease in soybeans. More recently, newer diseases like soybean cyst nematode, sudden death syndrome and brown stem rot have shown up in our area. Knowing these disease symptoms and where they are found on your farm is critical in soybean seed selection. Newer genetics of today have different scores for each disease.

One variety may be higher in white mould tolerance, but lower in brown stem rot, as an example. If you historically do not have white mould on your farm but higher disease presence of brown stem rot and pick a variety just based on the white mould trait and its yield, it could mean disaster in a high brown stem rot disease year. We saw this in 2024 and in our research plots. White mould presence was much lower, but brown stem rot was much higher. This allowed us to screen out weaker experimental products with lower brown stem rot scores, thus advancing the higher-tolerant ones that will be evaluated in grower fields in 2025.

Other factors come into play as well. Relative maturity is important, especially if one is looking at planting winter wheat after soybeans. Harvest standability scores are critical and go hand-in-hand with white mould ratings if that disease is of concern in your geography. Picking the right product for the right acre comes down to field scouting and knowing what issues are causing problems on your farm. In-season note-taking and talking with seed and input suppliers all help with this process.

Predicting future performance and what is the best product to grow next year is the million-dollar question I get asked about a lot. To address this question, I always look at past performance as the best indicator of future performance. This is where you must take the emotional side of seed selection, place it aside, and look at data across multiple years and multiple environments (soil, types, management practices, weather conditions, etc.) in local and surrounding area plots.

For soybeans, I like looking at 30 sets of data to predict performance in my local area. Combining this with similar data sets in geographies to the west and east of me helps build that data set.

Statistical work has been done on picking the right hybrid based on yield differences and the number of environments.

As you can see by the chart, if we have one environment (plot), you have a 51 per cent chance of picking the right variety if there is a two-bushel difference between products. If you look at 30 sets of data, that percentage of picking the right product jumps to 75 per cent. That is where using company and university data comes into play to supplement your own on-farm plot data.

If someone wants you to buy a product off one plot, be wary! Would this product have the same performance as last year? Was the product trial replicated? The 2024 season had its challenges, and with excessive moisture in many areas, drainage, soil topography, and water infiltration may have been the differences in why Product A outyielded Product B.

Be specific on where you pull your data from as well. For example, I look heavily at soybean data from Eastern Ontario and Quebec more than Southern Ontario for white mould differences in products. In these geographies we tend to have more mould pressure than Southern Ontario, so data from this type of environment suits my customer base better.

In the end, take the time to scour company websites for plot data. Talk to your trusted seed advisors reviewing data. These advisors see a lot of other issues in your area that you may not be aware of. Doing a little bit of homework will help you pass the seed selection test with flying colours.

Happy New Year! May 2025 be your best crop production year yet, and may you be blessed with health and happiness. BF