Issues that may affect Midsouth soybean producers--Aug. 2025
Midsouth soybean producers should now be taking soil samples for testing of nutrient levels in their fields. The following are important points that should be considered when assessing soil test results.
• Understanding how to interpret the information in a soil test report is crucial for managing land that will be used for next season’s soybeans.
• Evaluate the pH that is provided in the report. The availability of many of a crop’s essential nutrients is based on soil pH.
• Pay particular attention to the content of phosphorus [P] and potassium [K] in the submitted samples.
• In today’s environment of lower available sulfur [S] from natural sources such as fossil-fuel burning power plants, producers likely should start paying increased attention to the S content in samples, especially on low organic matter [OM] soils. Recent research indicates that fall-applied S can be as effective as spring-applied S if S fertilizer is needed.
• Producers are encouraged to remember that fertilizer recommendations are based on the requirements of the crop to be grown on a site rather than the economic return from the yield response expected from an application of fertilizer nutrients.
• Producers should realize that a cut in the rate of an application of any one fertilizer element should likely be done in consort with a cut in the rate of all fertilizer elements.
• Finally, proper soil sampling and testing is the key tool to ensuring that soil fertility is adequate for achieving the intended yield goal of any crop.
Click here for a White Paper on proper soil sampling, here for a White Paper on soybean tissue testing, and here for optimum soil and soybean tissue levels of essential nutrients deemed necessary for soybeans.
In an article titled USDA, Purdue research projects aim to improve soybeans, author Tom Bechman highlights research that is being conducted by soybean breeders and geneticists at Purdue Univ. to improve/enhance soybeans. The highlighted genetic improvements will be available to private industry soybean breeders for incorporation into forthcoming new varieties. Some of the genetic improvements being sought are 1) enhanced nutritional quality of soybean meal, 2) resistance to frogeye leaf spot [a major soybean disease], 3) searching for traits in wild soybeans that could widen the germplasm pool, and 4) using drones to help make decisions about breeding progress.
Public soybean breeders and geneticists throughout the soybean-producing-region of the U.S. provide improved/enhanced germplasm that can be used to enhance forthcoming soybean varieties from the private sector. Click here for an article that touts the importance of breeding and genetics in this effort, and here for an example of an advancement made by USDA-ARS geneticist Dr. J.R. Smith at Stoneville, Miss.
For the first time in over 30 years, a herbicide [Icafolin] with a new and unique site-of-action is being developed for crops that include soybeans. Bayer, the company responsible for this development, expects this new postemergence [PE] herbicide to be available to producers in the next 4 to 5 years. The company is also planning to make available in 2026 a new [to the U.S.] Group 12 herbicide called Convintro [a.i. Diflufenican] that can be used in soybeans for burndown and PE applications.
The above are examples of how both the public and private sectors are working to make soybean farming more productive.
Composed by Larry G. Heatherly, Sep. 2025, larryh91746@gmail.com