Combines are rolling throughout the state as harvest 2021 ramps up. While you’re in the combine, be sure to check out the latest Purdue Crop Chat Podcast, available for download now at hoosieragtoday.com, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Purdue Extension Soybean Specialist Shaun Casteel and Corn Specialist Dan Quinn discuss USDA’s yield estimates and potential harvest time issues in this latest podcast.
Casteel says there are a good number of soybean fields that have spots of green stem syndrome.
“You’ve got this photosynthate, these plant sugars, that’s been created by the leaves and then something has happened to our pod load and our seed load. So, in other words, we have all this energy and all this sugar to get translocated and utilized. All of a sudden, the pods and the seeds are gone or there aren’t as many. So, in that case, they finish filling out the few pods that are there and the seeds and now they just maintain the stems. So, there are going to be pockets of fields that have this green stem syndrome, but the pods themselves are going to be brown, harvest mature, they’ll be 10%-12%, and then green as a gourd on the stem. So, we need to be ready to roll when the grain’s ready.”
Casteel says you might have to slow the combine down a bit to cut through those green stems.
For corn, Quinn is concerned about stalk quality, especially in fields where tar spot took over in northern Indiana.
“So, I encourage people to be out there and still walking their fields even though we’re close to harvest. Maybe walking them perpendicular, those rows, and just push on some of those corn plants or maybe split some stalks…you can even pinch them and see if they’re still hard or maybe there’s just not good integrity there and just get an indication, you know I do have some fields with poor stalk quality, maybe I need to harvest those first. So, if we do have a significant storm system move through, or significant winds that potentially could knock down some that corn, that’s something that we’re really trying to have people pay attention to and could be important this time of year.”
USDA has pegged Indiana’s corn yield at 197 bpa and soybeans at 60 bpa. Both Quinn and Casteel feel like those are lofty numbers for a statewide average. Hear more in the podcast below!