The Missouri Strip Trial Program
In an attempt to ensure that Mississippi soybean producers can access any and all resources that may provide them with useful and timely information, I often provide the link to a site that I have surmised (based purely on the site’s title) can provide such information.
This is the case with The Missouri Strip Trial Program. This activity is deemed “A New Opportunity for Farmers and Crop Advisors.” It is a grower-focused program that is designed to help farmers and crop advisors compare on-farm-tested management decisions and practices. The program uses field-scale strip trials to conduct research that will provide data and information that can be used to make production input decisions and evaluate touted best management practices. The premise of the program is that in-season aerial imagery and GPS-referenced yield monitor data will allow producers to evaluate treatments or inputs through carefully managed and conducted side-by-side comparisons.
In this program, farmers use their own equipment to conduct research in their own fields. They work with a Univ. of Missouri Extension Specialist or crop consultant of their choice to guide the planning and implementation of the particular activity on their farm. This is to ensure that participating growers conduct a reliable, statistically valid, unbiased evaluation of a particular practice or product. This also ensures that any information coming from these trials is scientifically sound and can be trusted for use by others.
Content on the site includes a list of trials by year that were conducted at various locations throughout the state. By clicking on the link for each listed trial, information about the methods used in and the results from each linked trial can be accessed. Example trials for 2019 and earlier follow.
• 2019 trials that include “Cover Crop Termination Date Trials”, “Early Disease Soybean Seed Treatment Trials”, and “Fungicide Trials”.
• 2018 Trials that include “Cover Crop Comparison Trials”, “Cover Crop Termination Date Trials”, “ILeVO Seed Treatment Trials”, and “Fungicide Trials”.
• 2017 Trials that include “Cover Crop Comparison Trials”, “Cover Crop Termination Date Trials”, and “ILeVO Seed Treatment Trials”.
• 2016 Trials that include “Cover Crop Termination Date Trials” and “ILeVO Seed Treatment Trials”.
Along with the list of each year’s trials is a Missouri map showing the county location of that year’s trials.
I realize that the location of these trials–Missouri–may be deemed by some to be too far north of Mississippi to provide useful information. However, many practices and products used in soybean production likely will perform similarly regardless of latitude. Also, the results from the Missouri locations can be used to compare and/or validate results from similar activities conducted in the Midsouth. One can check the maps for locations that were used to conduct the indicated trials to determine just how distant those locations are from a producer’s Mississippi location. It may be that the location of trials that were conducted in the Missouri Bootheel are not that far removed from a north Mississippi location.
I encourage you to bookmark the above link to this information resource that may be used to verify or validate information you receive from other sources.
Composed by Larry G. Heatherly, Apr. 2019, larryheatherly@bellsouth.net