To get a clean harvest run in the middle of each strip. Even with a bigger platform, a bigger planter split gives enough of a buffer between varieties to give a “clean” trial.

like I mentioned below, low 50’s in Iowa is hardly a indication of what each beans potential is under ideal growing conditions, or even average ones for that matter.

in addition to further complicate things he used flexstar over all of it, which most would think would be a minor detail, and it could be, IDK.  In our testing most xtends beans showed no real yield reduction between herbicide applications of flexstar vs xtends, but there were a couple of brand x beans (non Monsanto seed) that did show a yield reduction if they had flexstar applied.