This year was a fairly extreme example of how the weather can interfere with our crops. The eastern part of the state almost got too much rain, but western Iowa had to deal with drought and pest issues. However, this now means we have even more data on how our crops respond to certain kinds of stress. Greg Peters, an LG Seeds agronomist in western Iowa, said the year started off with planting issues and snowballed a bit from there.
The cold, wet start to planting season gave way to drought conditions as the crops grew, which provided many challenges to their corn and soybean hybrids. Once they analyzed the crop performances, Peters said they were a little amazed by which hybrids performed the best.
Fortunately, most of the disease issues- especially tar spot- didn?t pop up until later in the season, so the crops had an easier time handling them. Peters said that, while no hybrid is completely resistant, each corn hybrid had a different way of responding to tar spot.
Peters also provided some advice for Iowa producers to consider for future crops.
For more information, visit lgseeds.com.
