Kentucky Soybean Variety Trials

The 2010 Kentucky soybean variety trial data can be found by clicking ------> here.

Harvest continues, yields, wheat planting

The last three weeks have been very busy, as combines are rolling across the entire area. My previous update talked about our first harvested field that hit 78 bpa. If that concerned you, don't worry, I havent', and most likely won't, see anything close to that again this year. That field was a special situation in which early planting, relatively early maturity, and adequate rainfall at that location led to a near perfect storm in a year like this.

My most recent yield numbers are more reflective of what I am hearing for yield number across the state. More recent yields have range anywhere from 19 to 49 bpa. Fortunately, most seeds were in the ground within the optimum planting window this year, or we might be looking at an even uglier situation.

I'm getting quite a few questions about wheat planting this year. Dr. Chad Lee put out a very informative article about the not so stellar options we have this year when planting the wheat crop. The link is below.

Wheat Planting: Two options and neither is great

Harvest is underway

The first field for SoyMVP 2010 was harvested on Tuesday, September 7. This field was planted in Henderson County with a 3.9 maturity soybean on April 22. We achieved a yield average of around 78 bushels per acre across the field. If your yields aren't up there, don't worry, this isn't going to be the norm for this year. The Henderson County location received several timely rains that we really didn't get anywhere else in west Kentucky this year.

I'll keep updating as harvest continues.

250 acres in 11 minutes!

A new Guinness World Record was set in Winkler, Manitoba, Canada when 200 combines simultaneously harvested a single field. The combines took care of approximately 250 acres of wheat in 11 minutes. The event was held in an effort to raise money for children's camps.

Check out the website http://harvestforkids.com/ for more information.

Field shots

Just some pictures taken along the way this season...

Crop update

Depending on where I go in the state, the looks of the soybean crop can change quite dramatically. I would describe the majority of our program fields as good or excellent, while a couple are extremely dry (see below).





To view weekly crop reports, go here.

We've reached R4-R5 in most of our fields, with the double crop fields being around R2. Disease and insect pressure is noticeably lower than usual and is vastly different than what we saw last year, particularly with diseases. I've seen some SDS but you really have to look for it to find it. I'll be really interested to see what kind of effects we get from fungicides this year. We'll have several comparisons on.

Taylor County Extension Field Day

I want to send out a Thank You to Pat Hardesty and the rest of the folks at the Taylor County Extension office for having me out to speak about SoyMVP at their field day on July 20. They had an excellent turnout and I got to meet a lot of good people in an area of the state I don't get to often.