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Crop-Trak Current |
Crop-Trak Archive |
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Crop-Trak Archive 02/05/16 8:48:37 AM Crop Trak Update 09/16/15 Now that harvest is in full swing, we can really start to see how stress through the season has affected the outcome. Even though we may have ended up with about the same amount of rainfall inches this season compared to last, the distribution was not the same as last season. Rather than timely rainfall, we got months of constant rainfall after corn was planted. This resulted in extremely high nitrogen losses. Even with top dress applications you still see a lot of tipback on ears do to stress. Once stunted plants got into good growing conditions they shot up to normal heights but with stalks that have less mass. Now at harvest, we are seeing a lot of wind damage to corn and less than ideal stalk integrity in general. Some varieties are more susceptible than others but in general most plants have thinner stalks. Stalk rot will be more of a concern because of plant stress and lack of carbohydrates in the stalk. It seems our average yields in this area are between 140-160 bu with yields above and below that. The early September rains that we received in this area completely changed our yield situation in beans. With warm dry weather for weeks prior to the rain, we were set up for less than ideal grain fill. There are fields that benefited more than others due to their growth stage but all bean fields benefited from the rain. With the timeframe beans were given, I think they are going to do well. One caveat to that is the intense sporadic insect pressure we have had late season. Podworms have been very damaging this year. If you are looking at pods now and they have holes in them with no bean, its podworms. Stinkbug damage will likely be more prevalent this season too. Podworms favor late planted soybeans and the only thing that kept them from becoming an even bigger problem this season is moisture allowing the beans to grow thick closed canopies. Beans planted late July are at the highest risk due to open short canopies. Soybean aphids did reach our area this year and with beans being planted late, there were some fields that reached threshold in early grain fill stages and had to be sprayed. Frogeye leaf spot came in late this year but just in time to cause yield damage to some fields and not others. Many fields were sprayed with a fungicide and many were not due to their growth stage. This was a very important year to be scouting fields as insect and disease pressures came in later growth stages. Depending on the pressure and growth stage would have depended on whether to spray or not. The Crop Trak program is designed for these situations. Every field is different. The consultants within Crop Trak are able to adjust herbicide plans as situations change through the season. They are deeply grounded in agronomic knowledge and handle every field according to its unique case. Contact a local West Central Agri Services store to learn more about Crop Trak. Jason Mefford CCA Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com 7/13/15 Corn continues to have good yield potential across the country side. I am still not seeing disease progress enough to spray for. Many guys are wanting to hold out and see if they will need to spray at all. Beans are up but I only have one grower who has perfect fields. Otherwise, everyone has something that needs replanted and it ranges from half to all of fields. Many people are on their third replant. We should finally get to spray beans this week. Not much else has changed since last week. I have not seen any Japanese beetles anywhere yet. 6-04-15 Checked corn and wheat in the Adrian area. All corn is stressed from too much rain. Just about every acre of corn I scout is going to be topdressed, 90% by plane if not 100%. Theres stunting, yellowing, and in low areas some stand loss. I do believe our top end yield is gone, but topdressing will still help maintain a good potential. All wheat fields have head scab to some degree and it ranges from 10%-50% from field to field and within some fields. Its dependent on variety and whether they did a head scab treatment. Even fields with head scab treatments have scab. Checked corn and wheat from Archie to Peculiar. Same deal, too much rain and corn is struggling. Everything is getting topdressed mainly by plane to keep some potential. Peculiar to Harrisonville. Checked corn and wheat. Corn is looking rough and needs some time to dry out. Its getting topdressed and a few need herbicide still but, its coming as soon as the field dries out. All of my growers are topdressing 60-70 lbs of N in all areas. The little bit of wheat I have here, still has a wide range on head scab through the field, but looks to be on average 15%. Garden City to Urich. Corn is yellow, stunted, and is in the process of getting topdressed. Folks are trying to get soybean burndown done but are having much trouble because of to much rain. I am telling guys to keep 2,4-D in the mix and take the restriction or disk. Gramoxone is doing well but, its not going to get everything at this time. If a grower is 100% no-till, then they will have to take restriction of some sort to kill weeds and it still may not get them. If they are open to field work, I think that is the way to go from a weed killing standpoint. It will slow them down so, many farmers may just settle with weeds. I have two soybean fields in, one will be replanted. Any fields I have seen from the road (very few) will have replant in the field. 9-8-14 Corn yields are coming out way better than I had expected. I rode in a combine last night where the yield monitor was riding around 240 bu/ac on 55-09. These were the end rows, he was just opening the field up. The ground is nothing special and its dryland, no topdress, no fungicide. When I left the average yield was at 210, but Im sure it went up. I think when corn dries down a little more, its gonna get crazy! Most corn I have seen or heard about is running 16-17% moisture. With the rains though, I have noticed not a lot of ears have actually nodded and Im finding kernals germinating in a lot of ears. Beans are doing pretty good. I think yields will be all over the board, generally good yields though. Found a lot of 4 bean pods in 48x10 the other day. Tried to find a 5 bean pod in it, but never did. Beans are basically done except for some later planted fields and wheat beans. I have found a few podworms in wheatbeans and will probably spray this week for them. Jason Mefford CCA Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com 9-2-14 Most soybeans in the area are in the mid fill to early full seed stage. Up until the rain, seed size was looking smaller than I would hope for, but now that we have some rain, many fields should fill out better. There has been a lot of sudden death syndrome across the whole region. Theres a picture attached that shows how much of a difference planting date can make on this disease. The beans on the left have SDS, the beans on the right are the same variety planted 10 days later. The cool wet conditions this spring made for widespread infection in most fields to different degrees. However, it seemed to show symptoms later this year than it usually does, so I don’t think the yield damage will be as severe as it could be. But, those plants affected will still have small beans.  Corn is being harvested and looks to be coming out pretty good. I had counted on that dry spell this summer during grain fill to hurt the corn quite a bit, but it seems to be coming out better than I thought. I have heard a lot of stories about corn being basically dry but, the plants still have green in them, making for slower runs through the field. Jason Mefford CCA Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com 8-11-14 Corn is pretty much done. The rains will help the later planted corn with grain fill. The earlier planted corn lost yield during the dry spell. Fields that I thought would be 180 bushel, came out to around 150. We could get a little test weight with the rain on some fields, but I have found some at black layer. Disease never really took off in the corn for the most part once it got dry. Beans got rain at the perfect time. This will help grain fill and give the chance for the plants to keep more pods. It was a million dollar rain. Disease and insect pressure has been low all season. Septoria has been the only disease I have found and most insecticides have been preventative. The majority of beans are filling pods and may have a few blooms on the plant. I think insect pressure will be a bigger issue from here on. But, things can pop up. Wheat beans are looking good and may have a lot more pressure than the full season beans. Jason Mefford CCA Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com Crop Scout Report 7-28-2014 by Jason Mefford The dry weather lately doesn’t look to have gotten to the corn unless it had a poor root system. Everything else looks to have taken the weather well. People have been running pivots though so I do expect the irrigated ground to be a little better than dryland still this year. All the corn is pretty much in the dough stage unless it was planted later. This week will be cooler and that will give the corn a lot of relief. The beans have not had a lot of insect pressure around here and continue not to. Septoria has been worse this year than normal and many guys have been spraying for it and adding an insecticide in. Rain now for the beans would be good as most fields are starting to set pods. I had expected to see a lot of SDS this season but, have not. Weed control seems to have been the biggest problem in beans this year so far. Scouting Report-Jason Mefford 7-25-2014 The corn is still looking real good. But, right now guys are starting to run pivots so this is where the pivot ground will pull ahead. Up until now, its all been pretty even between pivot and dryland corn. Most corn is in the dough stage now and I have even found some early dent corn. The only thing that is going to have a big impact on it now would be water. Beans are doing well and there is not much for insect pressure in this region. I have found newly hatched stinkbugs last week and empty egg sacks. So, they will be just in time for pod set. I think at the moment, stinkbugs maybe a bigger problem this year pretty soon. I do not see many bean leaf beeltes. Blister beetles are popping up in patches in a lot of fields, but they usually don’t get out of hand enough to spray for. Septoria is about the only disease pressure I am seeing at the moment. But, it has gotten bad enough to spray for in many fields. I am starting to see downy mildew on the upper leaves, but it rarely is an issue. I know other areas are having problems with Japanese beetles right now, but I have only found two so far. Scouting Report-Brandon Hebbert 7-7-2014 Most of the corn is finishing pollination and still looking great. Annual precipitation is now just low enough in many areas here that growers should consider running irrigators this week in our area. For more specific irrigation timing, check with the University of Missouri on “Woodruff Irrigation Charts” to help for more precise timing. Many people have also flown on fungicides over the past week. Grey leaf spot and Southern Rust are in many fields surrounding Rich Hill, but still in fairly low amounts. Most double-crop soybeans seem to be planted and came up well. Insect pressure in first-crop soybeans has been low this week in our area. The majority of my fields still show less than 5% defoliation. I started using a sweep net in all the fields to identify insects, and noticed mostly beneficial insects and a few green clover worms starting to show up. Most beans are just now at full canopy and either at bloom or close to first bloom. Scouting Report-Jason Mefford 7-7-2014 I have talked with MU and the mystery blight in some corn does not look to be a disease according to them. The best answer I have gotten from them is that earlier in the year when it was cool out, those leaves got stuck in the whorl longer and built up sugars. Once they emerged, they were unable to metabolize the sugar and became necrotic. It is basically only in P0365 and 33F50 both pioneer, so I have been calling it the Pioneer blight. I have found tiny bits of it in one field of 1151. The corn still looks to be doing well even with the blight problem. I think we are setting up for a record year in corn yields, especially after the rain this weekend. However, I have found just about every foliar disease we can get in corn in one field or another. Grey leaf spot, common, and southern rust are the most wide spread. I have found Northern corn leaf blight, northern corn leaf spot, eye spot, and smut. Haven’t seen southern corn leaf blight yet. I expect to find more grey leaf spot this week. At the moment, disease is the one thing that could make or break fields this year. Soybeans are looking good. A lot of fields have started blooming and I have seen one in full bloom. Disease is pretty low in the beans right now and leaf feeding is about the same. But, we should see a bean leaf beetle cycle pretty soon. Not much to report about in the beans. The disease pressure is still low mostly due to the canopy not being completely closed yet on many fields or just starting to get there Scouting Report- 6-23-2014 Beans here are as far along as V6 in some places and just starting to canopy on fields with 7.5” rows. Some fields have had high disease pressure from Phytophthora. This is a root-rot that can have a lot of economic damage. So it is important to walk your fields and determine if this exists and the severity of the problem. The only chemical treatment for Phytophthora is by using seed treatment. Corn is mostly around V16 and the tassel has started to show in many places this week. Expect fungicide applications to be made once tassel is fully emerged on many fields in this region. Many dissected corn plants are showing good ear production at this point. Wheat has been cut, but only in very small amounts here with little report of yields coming in so far. By Brandon Hebbert Corn everywhere is still looking great. At this time, there is enough moisture in the ground to allow for good pollination across our region. Most corn will begin tasseling this week and most will be tasseling next week. I have found very early signs of what looked to be grey leaf spot in corn. We have great weather conditions for it at the moment. Rust doesn’t seem to be growing much. Beans look to be growing out of the yellowing from all the moisture. Weed control options are getting limited due to carryover concerns from here on. Using Classic or Prefix could cause injury in corn next year from here on. Septoria is the only disease I have been seeing, but it is growing. Jason Mefford CCA Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com 6-16-2014 There are still a lot of beans that aren’t planted. Its looking like a lot of first crop beans are going to end up as wheat beans being planted so late. Beans have been getting a lot of water and showing chlorosis signs for a couple of weeks now. Once they dry out they should be fine. Corn looks amazing. Water standing in the fields and cloudy weather hasn’t been great on the corn, but I don’t think the stress has sacrificed as much yield as the hot dry weather we have normally been having this time of year. Jason Mefford CCA Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com 6-9-2014 Rich Hill Area Report by Brandon Hebbert Scouting Report- Corn is mostly around V8-V9 in this region. There has been an increase in stink-bug and armyworm feeding in our area, but mostly below economic thresholds. Most top-dressing is done. The hot humid weather has really helped the corn out. We are slightly below annual rainfall and may be running irrigation early this year since most corn has been planted early. Most corn is very close to canopy. Soybeans- Soybean planting still continues in our region. There has been very little replanting. Lots of beans are at the V3 stage, so it is crucial to check your fields at these stages and plan your overlapped residual herbicide accordingly. Insect feeding is still very low at this point. Wheat has taken a hard hit from dry conditions in some parts of this region. Armyworms have shown up in very trace amounts here, but I did not see any fields with cut heads. Frost and dry conditions have caused discoloration on some flag-leaf samples. We have sent in many samples showing flag-leaf discoloration to the University of Missouri plant pathology department that have all come back negative for bacterial or viral diseases. Wheat in this area is at the hard-dough stage and we may see cutting the last week of June here. 5-30-2014 Rich Hill Area Report by Brandon Hebbert Early planted corn had been injured by frost, but this week is looking much better. There has been only a trace amount of killed plants that were at the V6 stage where the growing point was more vulnerable to freezing temperatures as it was out of the ground. Rain has been scattered throughout Northern Vernon county and Southern Bates county ranging from .2 -2inches. Corn in this region in general is looking very good and responding well to the hot humid days. Most corn here is around V6-V7 stage, so be sure to check the growth stage on your plants and check with your West Central location before applying an herbicide. Waterhemp and cocklebur emergence has been on the rise. Many farmers planted soybeans deep in this area to get to the moisture, with good results and plants just emerging. Damping off has been noticed in some fields so scout and do stand counts to determine your field populations. Some of the earliest planted corn is at the first trifoliate. This is a crucial time to make sure you know your fields weed pressure and apply treatments as many chemicals such as Prefix can only be applied to the V3 stage. This, as well as the whole season, is crucial to scout your fields and determine insect thresholds. Wheat in the area had very uneven head emergence and flowering. This made timing a head-scab fungicide very difficult to produce optimum results. There are trace amounts of armyworms also appearing and head-scab just starting to show in some of the more Southern fields. Frost damage to leaves is apparent in many fields as well. 5-28-14 Crop Trak Update: Our corn has really taken off after this varying rainfall across our region. We have had varying rainfall amounts from .25 inches to 3 inches in our area since the last Crop Trak update. We have had some isolated incidents and reports of cutworms in our area, as well as armyworms in our corn. Remember while spraying your corn to look at the label for number of collars not just crop height restrictions. Soybeans that were planted a couple weeks ago finally received some beneficial rain which has allowed them to emerge. From La Tour to Warrensburg, soybeans just emerged this last weekend of the most part. There hasn’t been any noticeable insect pressure, but we did see a stand loss on fields that had untreated soybeans vs. treated beans. Be on the lookout for soybean leaf beetles as we have seen some while out scouting. Post emerge herbicide application on your soybeans will be needed soon especially if you did not use a pre-emerge herbicide. Contact your local West Central Agri Services location to get on the books for application. Wheat continues to look average across the area unless you were early planted. Disease pressure is relatively low compared to last year and insect pressure is very light. We are continuing to see most of our wheat in the flowering stage. With rainfall in the forecast every day for the next week it could help us maintain yields, however, if it turns off hot and windy we could see some kernel development issues and lighter test weight. Brandon Badgley WCAS Agronomy Sales Centerview/Chilhowee 660-624-2958 5-16-14 Crop Trak Update: For the most part, corn across the region is in and has good stands. There is very little replant going on. Cutworms have been found in the region so, if growers are getting ready to spray corn, an insecticide added in would be a good idea. Waterhemp has emerged in full force in the last week, so the clock is ticking to get fields sprayed whether its corn or no till burndown. This years wheat crop looks to be an average year. Late plantings in addition to a long cold winter has led to average stands with fewer tillers. Disease pressure has been low this spring along with insect pressure. Temps have recently dropped to about 32 degrees while wheat is flowering. There could be some isolated areas of damage but, according to Colorado State University and others, temps need to reach 30 degrees to cause damage.
2/18/14 Stand evaluation of wheat needs to be done as soon as snow cover is off. Thin stands with minimal tillering needs some nitrogen applied before greenup. Thicker stands or stand that have tillered well can wait until after greenup for its first nitrogen aplication. The Crop-Trak scouting program can help you with these decisions to avoid these hidden yield losses. 6/18/13 As everyone knows, this spring has been off to a hectic start. With constant rains, many growers were able to get into the field to plant a lot of their corn. However, many didn’t get to finish planting corn let alone start on beans. Being a race to get the crops in, growers have not had time to get a lot of herbicide on. With that delay, weeds are getting larger than ideal for a good kill and products that are geared for earlier application like Degree Xtra may not provide the results that growers are looking for. Adding in herbicides with more foliar activity like Callisto, RoundUp, Capreno, and Sencor would provide better results that are expected by growers. Also, one thing to keep in mind is that once corn is more than a foot tall, it is off label. Delaying chemical application would usually result in more loss of plants to cutworms, but this year has been mild on cutworm activity in this area unlike armyworms in the wheat this year. Most wheat is in the later parts of maturity and armyworms have less of an impact from here on out, unless you find heads being clipped from the stems. Sidewall compaction will be an issue on many farms this year with growers planting into ground a little more moist than they would otherwise plant into. Sidewall compaction forces the plants roots to grow down the seed furrow rather than horizontally in all directions. This can contribute to less nutrient uptake and a higher susceptibility to drought stress later in the year in addition to possible lodging problems. Corn will most likely be stunted in growth from early on in the season. Using toothed press wheels can help reduce sidewall compaction and give plants more room to grow. Soybeans are not off to as hectic of a start as corn was but, growers are pushing back their herbicide applications in soybeans to get corn’s done. This domino effect can create the same weed problems in soybeans as is happening in corn. However, the herbicide selection for soybeans is a little more limited than it is for corn and getting to weeds in beans sooner is important. Coming over the top of beans with chemicals like Prefix, not only has foliar activity on weeds but provides an in season residual to help carry the beans to canopy. But, Prefix applications need to be made by the third trifoliate. After that, applications will be off label. Seeking the knowledge of a crop consultant when times get hectic can help keep growers from making yield limiting decisions and growers can know what’s going on in the field while they are busy with getting the rest of their crops in. That piece of mind in knowing that someone skilled is watching over their investment can give growers flexibility in other areas of the farm. Becoming part of MFA’s Crop Trak program can give growers access to skilled crop consultants and allow growers more time to get seed in the ground. Jason Mefford Crop Consultant West Central Agri Services Cell: 660-525-5097 Email: jmefford@mfa-inc.com 5-7-13
Rob Kallenbach
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