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EC Nebraska | I have a field with a few "salt licks" in one area. Those spots are quite high in sodium and most bean varieties will be very short and spindly if they grow at all in those spots.
One year I ordered a planter fill of a "sodium excluder" bean from Syngenta and started planting in that area of the field. The rest of the field was planted to one of my usual varieties that is known to perform well on my ground. Due to the way the field is laid out, this resulted in several large "strips" of one variety next to the other.
All summer those bad spots looked normal for the first time ever. One the yield monitor they were barely visible, yellowish instead of dark red. So the sodium excluder trait certainly improved the beans in those spots where high sodium was the limiting factor.
However, you could also see on the monitor the entire strips with the excluder variety. That variety as a whole was a few bushel less than the well adapted variety on the "normal" ground.
Whether that was because the base genetics weren't as well adapted for my operation or whether the excluder gene has a yield drag I don't know. It was only one year with one variety, after all.
I do think that if your entire field has high sodium issues that it is well worth your time to try one or more of the excluder varieties. | |
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Does Salt tie up N Or is it the gypsum?
