Farmers are beginning the analysis of the 2023 crop yield before harvest wraps up. Troy Bauer of BASF says making notes is important as it relates to solving crop issues. One of the eye-popping stats so far on some of the early data is that soybean fields that had been continuous corn prior for a long time are showing quite a bit better yield results, likely because of soybean cyst nematode pressure.
“If you had a weak yield of some sort, you can’t figure out why. Definitely take the time to test out there, we’ve got stuff from anywhere from the 2000 eggs per 100 CC up to about 40,000 eggs per 100 CC in some tests coming back from Iowa here this fall already.”
He says the testing doesn’t have to be complicated.
“Typically what they’ll do is you can send them off to many different labs do this. You can have them do basically one out of so many, you know four or five. You can do it by grid, you can do it by hotspot, you can go by whatever you want. The cost obviously comes into play there, you have to make those decisions with how you want to test for this. Definitely get a test to get a baseline, however you get that done, whether it’s one composite sample from across the field or across a multi acre grid. You don’t need to put do it on every single one like we typically do on a fertility grid sample, just get a base set.”
Now, he says, believe it or not, Soybean Cyst-Nematode continues to be the number one soybean yield robbing pest here in Iowa.
