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Early blooming soybeans bring up management concerns

Many soybean plants are blooming ahead of schedule in Missouri and that brings up management questions. University of Missouri soybean specialist Bill Wiebold tells Brownfield the heat and drought have led to the early bloom and management depends on what farmers plans to spray, “If there’s some kind of application that has a stage of development on the label then you need to follow whatever that label says and we’re going to have to stop, in some cases, maybe spraying a particular herbicide sooner than what we normally would have.”

Wiebold says soybean plants typically flower when days start to get shorter which doesn’t begin until mid-week this week. And, the plants are shorter than normal wherever it’s dry, “And so they look pretty weird. They may have five or six trifoliate leaves on but they may be only a few inches tall and are flowering. I think that’s kind of having an effect on people, you know, ‘what’s going on? These things are flowering so early.’”

Wiebold says it’s hard to predict how much of an effect there will be on soybean yield. Rain IS in the forecast for the second half of this week in much of Missouri, after a long stretch of dryness.

AUDIO: Interview with Bill Wiebold, June 15, 2018 ~

 

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