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NWMO | I’ve found a couple things that make the biggest difference to us:
1) water. And this is really the biggest one. Notice that the highest yielding soybeans on record were all grown under irrigation. Hot and dry August-September ruins an otherwise promising soybean field, being able to add water is essential. This is why guys are praying for rain late season to finish, those last clusters can make a difference.
2) fungicide and insecticide. And really the insecticide might be more important at times than the fungicide. We use Revytek on all the beans now. We’ve also used a mixture of 50:50 Priaxor and quilt XL as a cheaper option and has worked well too, but the insecticide is big. Don’t cheap out, use a good insecticide to protect the plants for as long as possible to mitigate stress in that R2-R4 window
3) variety selection and population. We’ve started going shorter season than what is the norm here. We have irrigation for a lot of the ground now is why. We can keep it watered in July/August. We found less doesn’t always equal more, but consistent stand makes a difference as does better light interception. Why’s this important? Better light usage and soybean finish. An early frost is tough on beans, so we want them to finish every year. We started soybean harvest on September 19th this year on beans planted on April 25th. They were flowering in late June/early July giving us more light for longer = more yield potential. Also, selecting for SDS, IDC, and pH makes a humongous difference, don’t just select race horse varieties, select what’s going to be a race horse for your specific ground and conditions.
4) fertiltiy. 100 bu/ac soybeans require a lot of food. 435 lb/ac N, 220 lb/ac K2O, 97 lb/ac P2O5, 35 lb/ac S…. A soybean can naturally fix 250-300 lb maximum N (probably closer to the 250 number) which equates to 58 bu/ac beans. Having high OM, high K and adequate P makes a difference. No high yielding guy goes without adding fertility throughout the year, they just don’t tell you what they add. But I’d bet money they’re adding substantial amounts of N and S throughout the season, especially in that R1-R4 timeframe.
As for your question, “what specific things to do to have more pods/node” there is no silver bullet. I was trying to show that soybean yield and pod count are attached to multiple factors. The pictures below are from a couple different places. Yes, a couple of the picture are cherry picked, but the picture of the lodged beans (wind + lots of irrigation) is from 100 yards out in the field. This is my findings over the last 8 of learning soybeans. Sorry for the long post, just figured I’d give my whole $0.02
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IMG_7749 (full).png (389KB - 286 downloads)
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Getting more pods per node
