Hello Colleagues,

I hope you have wrapped up most, if not all, of your harvest. In my area of the state, it turned out to be a good production year with exceptional soybean yields.

Now we are concentrating on fertility and field work, both important factors in maintaining high yields.

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics, only 17 percent of Mississippi soybean acres received some form of phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) fertilizer in 2010. That is a very low number considering how much P and K leave the field when you deliver your beans to the elevator. Without replacing those nutrients, soybean varieties may have a hard time reaching their genetic yield potential. Recent research suggests that a 70-bushel-per-acre soybean crop takes approximately 60 pounds of P and 91 pounds of K out of each field. If these nutrients are not replaced, fertility may become one of the restricting factors in achieving maximum yield.

Evaluating the effects of adding P and K in your fields is just one of the research projects being funded by the MSPB. The same project also evaluates different soil-testing extraction methods used by laboratories and how they may affect P and K fertilizer recommendations.

But we still need more research projects that will benefit Mississippi soybean farmers.

Currently, the Mississippi Soybean Promotion Board is in the process of sending new requests for proposals (RFPs) to the universities and other contractors that conduct research. From the responses to these RFPs, MSPB farmer-leaders select projects they determine will have the highest projected impact on Mississippi soybean production and therefore on your bottom line.

MSPB would like to invite you as producers to suggest research projects that could have a direct impact on your financial success. Your ideas could relate to fertility, diseases, insects, irrigation, management practices, and more.  If you have an idea, please contact MSPB Research and Technology Transfer Coordinator, Larry Heatherly, Ph.D., at larryheatherly@bellsouth.com, or a MSPB board member.

What excites me the most as a soybean producer is the high yield potential of new soybean varieties that have been and continue to be introduced to the market. As new variety-trial results from Mississippi State University are made available, continue to check the enhanced variety-selection tool on the MSPB website, www.mssoy.org, for information you can use in selecting high-yielding and high-quality seed varieties suited to your farm.

I wish you a safe and prosperous fall.

Sincerely,

Jan de Regt
MSPB Chairman
Hollandale, Miss. soybean farmer