Mississippi Crop Report:
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Soybeans break "yield barrier"By Keith Remy OLIVE BRANCH -- When Mississippi's 1994 field crops were breaking records, Joe Askew, Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station variety evaluations manager, figured his experimental plots would do well. But he didn't realize how well. For the first time in his career managing research in the most appropriate plants for Mississippi's farmers, he saw a soybean variety test break the mythical 100-bushels-per-acre barrier. By contrast, average 1994 state soybean yields were 29 bushels per acre. The plot, four rows wide and 20 feet long, came from a valid test, widely respected throughout the industry. It produced at a rate of 107.5 bushels per acre. The record-setting variety, Pioneer 9444, was planted on the farm of experimental cooperator Steve Williams near Olive Branch -- the northernmost hill site in the 1994 trials. Askew said the plots, originally planted April 20, were so heavily damaged two weeks later by a flooding spring rain, they had to be replanted May 18. "The three replications of the variety at that site averaged 89.6 bushels per acre," said Askew. "That's greater than I've ever harvested from any single plot." What's more amazing to Askew and Art Smith, DeSoto County agent, is that the 100-bushel variety was an early-maturing Group IV that had to be replanted. "Early Group IV's aren't expected to yield as well in Mississippi as later-maturing Group IV varieties," Askew said. Smith's task was to monitor the variety test plots weekly during the growing season and two or three times a week during the maturing period. Williams' responsibility was to control weeds -- the same as he controlled them in his commercial soybean fields. Askew said when the beans were harvested last fall with a special plot combine, his crew realized they must have some sort of record. The bags almost burst at the seams. The soil type on the Williams farm is Collins silt loam. Other than above-normal rains at both ends of the season, Mother Nature provided ideal ingredients to the yield recipe. In addition to timely rains and favorable temperatures at strategic times, diseases and insects were not a problem. Mississippi's 1994 soybean variety tests were conducted at seven different sites, four of them on farms of grower-cooperators. For a fee, commercial seed companies enter one or more varieties for testing on four or more locations. Public varieties for evaluation at each location are selected by a technical advisory committee. Askew is especially enthusiastic about the tests conducted on grower farms. Results are more believable and apply throughout the test area. Experiment stations at land-grant universities in other soybean-growing states also conduct variety tests. However, no other state's program is directed by a technical advisory committee made up of breeders, company representatives, agronomists, growers, extension agents, plant pathologists, entomologists and nematologists. The committee helps select off-station sites to get tests in areas of highest acreage. This makes the yield comparisons more useful to area growers. Results from the Mississippi tests are published annually. Each county extension office is issued a computer diskette with a program that will sort out varieties susceptible to any diseases that may be present in an individual grower's field. In addition, the Mississippi test results are available throughout the world on the Internet (Gopher, Lynx, and World Wide Web). Released:
Jan. 19, 1995 |
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