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Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report put Indiana soybeans at 70% good-to-excellent, a 2% increase from the prior week despite the heatwave that rolled through the Hoosier state.
“Beans look really good,” says Purdue Extension’s ‘Soybean’ Shaun Casteel on the latest Purdue Crop Chat podcast, found now at HoosierAgToday.com. “A lot of opportunities there, but they’ve got to finish filling. So, these next 20 days are going to make or break that crop.”
Casteel reiterates how critical this time period is for these soybeans.
“We’ve documented this. We’re up to 3-4.5 bushels per acre, per day. Hear that number again: we’re putting on 3-4.5 bushels per acre, per day during this high seed fill window. And so, a lot of that range depends on soil moisture, depends on pod load, depends on the management to get you there, if you don’t have good foliar protection if you’ve got disease. Or if you don’t have the nitrogen supply in those leaves, they’re going to start remobilizing and senescing. So, whenever these beans start senescing, we don’t catch that top end yield.”
USDA pegged the Indiana soybean crop at a record-tying 60 bushels per acre in their estimates in early August. Casteel thinks we’re a bit lower now.
“Some of those surprises that hit us in a few areas with white mold, some of the nitrogen supply that hit us in the southeast, and we’ve got some dry areas in the northwest, I think we are taking a little bit off. I’d probably knock it back half a bushel. I think I’m at 59.5 bpa if I’m going to look at our forecasts at this point, even with being up to 70% good-to-excellent on the crop rating. I just think that we’re not going to be able to finish filling out as much as we could have if we had a good nitrogen supply in particular on a lot of these highlighter green soybeans.”
Casteel has much more to say and provides some good-hearted ribbing to his corn colleague Dan Quinn in the Purdue Crop Chat, found now below or wherever you listen to podcasts.