Your Local Weekly Ag Partners Agronomic Update.
The one-stop-shop to hearing everything you need to know this week about what is happening in your fields.

Scroll down to hear from your local agronomist.

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West
Belle Plaine – LeCenter – LeSueur

Chad Mattes

Over the past few weeks we have noticed some compacted field areas that were starting to show signs of a disease called Sudden Death Syndrome or SDS.   Certainly not a new disease for our area, but one that is affecting larger than normal acres.  This is important to take into consideration as we plan for next year’s soybean acre.

SDS Facts:

1. It’s a fungal disease caused by Fusarium virguliforme.
2. Ranked second to only soybean cyst nematode (SCN) in damage to the crop.
3. Continues to spread to new fields and larger areas of the affected fields.
4. Fungus colonizes the crown and roots.  Above ground symptoms are caused from the toxin that the fungus produces.
5. Fungus overwinters in diseased soybean residue.

Conditions Favorable to SDS:

1. Cool/wet conditions early in the growing season.
2. Early planting followed by: high rainfall and/or lower lying poorer drained or compacted field areas.
3. Prior year/years with SDS infected fields.

So What Should We Do About It:

1. Pick premier SDS-resistant varieties.  Reach out to your Ag Partners agronomist for help with this selection process.  Between Asgrow, Brevant, Croplan, & NK we have plenty of good options.
2. Know which fields were problems in years past and use a delayed planting strategy on these acres.
3. Improve drainage and reduce compaction
4. Use a premier seed treatment (Warden CX + Saltro) to help early season root development, stand establishment, plant health, and vigor.

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Central 
Wanamingo – Kenyon – Morristown – Owatonna

Tanner Borgschatz

Harvest will be here before we know it and now is the time to start getting combine monitors setup. For our AYS customers, having field names and varieties preloaded will help save time this fall and help ensure clean data. Once harvest begins, yield monitors should be calibrated at the beginning of each season for each crop. Calibration is the most important step in collecting accurate data. Accurate yield data helps us better analyze trials, new products and our AYS database insights, and trends to offer better recommendations. Bad data in = bad data out.

Calibration of a yield monitor using one of our weigh wagons

An activity that follows closely behind harvest is grid sampling season. Having a plan with your agronomist ahead of harvest on which fields to sample will help minimize the time it takes to grid sample between harvest and  fall tillage. If you would like to have grid sampling done this fall or if you are unsure if you have fields that are due for resampling, contact your agronomist or AYS specialist.

Soil sampling rig

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South
Lewiston

Zach Thompson

Where is the rain?  Our most recent rain event was Friday August 21st into Saturday, where most of our area got .75”-1.25”.  The hot days and high humidity levels have been plentiful the last couple weeks.  So far we have had more than 12 days of greater than 90 degree days compared to only 3 day in the 2019 growing season.  This has really taken a toll on our crop.

Now is a good time to start thinking about your 2021 soybean crop.  There are a lot of questions to be asked!  Can I kill the weeds? Do I have white mold?  Do I have Sudden Death? Should I plant more corn? It’s definitely a long list and things that I have been thinking about.  Soybeans have two components:  Genetics and Traits.  We should think about disease and genetics before traits in my opinion.   It is important to get out and walk some fields right now- there are some differences that are really starting to show up between varieties, traits, chemical programs,etc.

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East
Pine Island – Cannon Falls -Goodhue -Lake City

Join Chris Soltau, Goodhue Agronomist, to hear a brief agronomic update. 
Click on picture below:

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WWAS
Ellsworth

Eric Soley

We have reached the point in the growing season where we have done everything we can to help maximize yield- now we just sit back and let Mother Nature finish the crop. Depending on the amount of rain you have received  in the last 2 weeks it’s either a feeling of relaxation or you are on pins and needles begging for more rain

A large part of our territory is at the point where we have been seeing the knobs of fields starting to show stress in the last 2 weeks. Much of our area received rain last Saturday morning but with the heat we are facing this week and high plant water usage, we definitely need more moisture to finish the year strong.

Sudden Death Syndrome has started to show up in areas but fortunately, for the most part, the soybeans were planted early and the SDS showed up late.  This should minimize its impact on yield.

Corn is maturing rapidly with some of the early planted corn starting to dent. I expect this to be a year where the fungicide acres show big returns as the acres treated will have a slower maturation process allowing for longer grain fill.  With the dry weather and heat, corn silage harvest will be here soon and it could be a small window to harvest at the ideal moisture.  Contact your agronomist/nutritionist to get samples checked