This summer a valued member of the N.C. soybean research team, Dr. Tommy Carter, retired. Dr. Tommy Carter is a soybean breeder at the USDA-ARS’s Soybean and Nitrogen Fixation Unite where he has been the head of the unit since 2011 and the facility’s leading research geneticist since 1981. Dr. Carter has worked tirelessly for…
On June 3 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District issued a ruling vacating U.S. registrations of three dicamba herbicides (XtendiMax, Engenia, FeXapan). This ruling has left much confusion across the industry and producers have heard many different things from various sources about the sale and use of these products. We hope to…
With many soybean growers in North Carolina exploring earlier planting dates and earlier maturity groups we often get the question, “Should I be using a seed treatment?”. So to help answer that question the NC Soybean Producers Association funded research with Dr. Rachel Vann and the NC State Soybean Extension team. Over the last few…
The 2020 growing season brings a number of options when it comes to herbicide-tolerant technology. With different traits available, herbicide trait technology is a critical part of the variety selection decision. Growers must weigh many factors, namely weed management, risk tolerance and overall profitability, when deciding which herbicide trait package is the best fit for…
Proper variety selection is one of the most important steps a soybean producer can make. It is important to devote some time to selecting the proper variety as this decision is one of the first steps to maximizing yields. If we compare the top 10% of soybean varieties grown within a single maturity group at…
As the end of the season draws near we’ve gotten some questions about estimating soybean yields. For some, this is because their crop looks good and they are excited to see what their yields may be, while for others this is because they are prepping themselves for disappointment, as weeks of dry weather have taken…
Scouting is critical to helping make management decisions that will ultimately increase profitability. Early rounds of scouting should look for emergence, stand and uniformity, early seedling diseases and weeds. Scouting often is essential to catching early season problems. We’ve been lucky to have pretty good planting weather thus far this season and for many NC…
Last week we tackled foliar yield enhancements so this week we’re changing gears just slightly and tackling non-foliar yield products. Various non-foliar yield enhancement products are available to North Carolina soybean producers. Profit margins are currently narrow for soybeans and much thought should go into the potential yield advantages and associated costs from the use…
One question we get often is about products that claim to improve soybean yields and profits. NC soybean farmers are presented with a variety of products that claim to boost their yields and the NC Soybean Producers Association has worked with NCSU Extension to evaluate these products over the last 6 years. The goal of…
Growers across North Carolina are becoming increasingly interested in producing earlier maturing soybean varieties (III and IV). These soybean maturity groups typically have an indeterminate growth habit, which allows simultaneous vegetative and reproductive growth over several weeks which is different than the determinate growth habit of most of the soybeans we produce in North Carolina…