Not A Complete Wash by Dr. Jason Weirich

I would love to deliver this column with the message that we harvested a bountiful crop at our research site last year. Instead, I have to tell you that our research and training plots got a taste of the same weather challenges and environmental damage that other producers in MFA’s trade territory endured in 2015.

This past year was one for the record books. Our planting crew got the corn in the ground in good shape on April 22. Everythingseemed like it was going to be perfect. But we had a lot of moisture at the wrong times.

Over the past few years at our plot location near Boonville, Mo., we’ve had some trouble with lodging. In light of that, we made the decision to delay planting our soybean crop until later in May—even though weather would have allowed us to get it in the ground earlier. You can guess what’s next. Soybean planting at the location went from the planned May target date to planting on June 7. Following planting, the skies stayed dark and full of rain. Beans tried to emerge through standing water. Needless to say, our planting-date study turned into a two-date planting-date study—one on June 7 and one on July 6. Surprisingly, the late-planted soybeans caught up to the early-planted soybeans’ height.

Once the crops were in and up, we had MFA employee training on July 29 and a two-day producer tour on August 6 and 7. About 800 people attend these events to learn about different production practices and new products coming down the pipeline.

If you were able to attend either one, you will recall that the corn was outstanding. I only wish it would have finished that way. On Sept. 10, a severe windstorm blew through the area. It caused severe lodging in our corn plots. Flattened corn, with stalks jumping across plot lines is not a pretty sight for a researcher.

We were able to harvest one of the early-look variety trials by having two people on each side of the combine to make sure we didn’t have any contamination from any of the other hybrids. But as we progressed, the practice looked to be less than safe. Thus, we decided to let our plot cooperator combine the rest of the corn. It would have been great to see results from our studies on nitrogen timing; nitrogen source; phosphorus enhancement products; foliar fertilizer; fungicide timing; and variety trials. But employee safety was top priority.

While the corn ended up flat on the ground, we were very hopeful that the soybeans would continue to stand. Although we had severe water logging and stand issues from the rain earlier in the season, we ended up with several good trials. This was the first year we were able to harvest all of the soybean plots at training camp.

We have been testing biologicals from Monsanto Bio-Ag the past couple years and have reported excellent results. Some of the other trials we have been conducting include seed treatments, seed nutritionals, tank contamination, phosphorus enhancement products, Aspire with Microessentials, and varieties to name a few. While they are not reported here, they will become available.

Although last year wasn’t the year we wanted from a research standpoint, we did the best we could. We join you in looking forward to a better growing season this year