Extension Specialists Seek Soybean Field Data To Help Farmers Reach Potential Yields

Feb 08, 2016

By Mark Licht

Agronomy

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach specialists are asking soybean farmers to provide yield and agronomic data specific to their soybean production fields by March 1, 2016. Daren Mueller, extension plant pathologist, and Mark Licht, cropping systems agronomist, are gathering the data for a three-year project to identify key factors that prohibit soybean farmers from obtaining yields that are potentially attainable on their respective farms.

Soybean production is expected to rise to satisfy the increasing demand for food, biodiesel and livestock feed, both in the United States and globally. It is critical to reduce the yield gap, which is the difference between the attainable crop yield, as determined by the interactive effects of weather, soils and genetics, and the actual crop yield attained by the producer.

“We will conduct an in-depth analysis of what factors might be causing a yield gap from the data we receive,” said Licht. “We intend to provide annual reports to all soybean farmers based on our analysis of the data collected from farms across Iowa and major soybean growing areas of the Midwest.

The “Soybean Yield Benchmarking Project” is a collaborative effort and is funded by soybean checkoff funds through the North Central Soybean Research Program. The 12 states in the North Central region of the United States produced 81 percent of total U.S. soybean production and acreage from 2010-2014. During this time, the average soybean yield for the region was 43 bushels/acre, but some producers have consistently reached soybean yields near or greater then 80 bushels/acre.

“This large gap between an average state yield and the very high yield obtained by some producers in that state needs to be explored and better understood,” said Licht.

The project will benchmark current yield and management practices in producer fields across each participating state to identify key management factors that can be used by individual producers to increase soybean yield on their farms with input-use efficiency that will improve bottom-line net profit.

“Once those factors are identified, both the producer and the university research or extension specialist can focus on how to close the yield gap for that individual producers and others like them,” said Mueller.

Source: iastate.edu

Video: Moving Ag Research Forward Through Collaboration

BY: Ashley Robinson

It may seem that public and private researchers have different goals when it comes to agricultural research. However, their different strategies can work in tandem to drive agricultural research forward. Public research may focus more on high-risk and applied research with federal or outside funding, while private sector researchers focus more on research application.

“For me, the sweet spot for public private sector research is when we identify problems and collaborate and can use that diverse perspective to address the different aspects of the challenge. Public sector researchers can work on basic science high risk solutions as tools and technologies are developed. They then can work with their private sector partners who prototype solutions,” Mitch Tuinstra, professor of plant breeding and genetics in Purdue University’s Department of Agronomy, said during the Jan. 10 episode of Seed Speaks.

Public researchers they have the flexibility to be more curiosity driven in their work and do discovery research. This is complimentary to private research, which focuses on delivering a product, explained Jed Christianson, canola product design lead for Bayer CropScience, explained during the episode.

“As a seed developer, we worry about things like new crop diseases emerging. Having strong public sector research where people can look into how a disease lifecycle cycle works, how widespread is it and what damage it causes really helps inform our product development strategies,” he added.

It’s not always easy though to develop these partnerships. For Christianson, it’s simple to call up a colleague at Bayer and start working on a research project. Working with someone outside of his company requires approvals from more people and potential contracts.

“Partnerships take time, and you always need to be careful when you're establishing those contracts. For discoveries made within the agreement, there need to be clear mechanisms for sharing credits and guidelines for anything brought into the research to be used in ways that both parties are comfortable with,” Christianson said.

Kamil Witek, group leader of 2Blades, a non-profit that works with public and private ag researchers, pointed out there can be limitations and challenges to these partnerships. While private researchers are driven by being able to make profits and stay ahead of competitors, public researchers may be focused on information sharing and making it accessible to all.

“The way we deal with this, we work in this unique dual market model. Where on one hand we work with business collaborators, with companies to deliver value to perform projects for them. And at the same time, we return the rights to our discoveries to the IP to use for the public good in developing countries,” Witek said during the episode.

At the end of the day, the focus for all researchers is to drive agricultural research forward through combining the knowledge, skills and specializations of the whole innovation chain, Witek added.

“If there's a win in it for me, and there's a win in it for my private sector colleagues in my case, because I'm on the public side, it’s very likely to succeed, because there's something in it for all of us and everyone's motivated to move forward,” Tuinstra said.