2020 Ground Work: Planting Preparation in Arkansas

Mar 25, 2020

By BRAD DOYLE

March has been relatively dry in our area of Arkansas, in the south-central U.S., so we’ve already gotten started on some fieldwork before planting. We’re excited to get started on this season, developing new soybeans and working with new traits. As soybean seed producers, we are a critical piece early in the soy supply chain, and we are figuring out how to keep moving as we manage challenges created by the spread of the coronavirus.

We’ve been going over our equipment for the farm and our Eagle Seed Company research plots to be sure it is updated and ready to go. We use large equipment on the farm to efficiently take care of all our fields. But research plots are small sections where we do trials and research, and we use smaller equipment customized for research to plant and care for them.

We’ve had a couple days dry enough to be in the fields, though forecasts call for another week of wet weather. But we’re hopeful for an early start to planting. That will be one way we can do our part to maintain food and feed supply through the current global situation.

We do a few things in our area to get fields ready to plant. In no-till fields, burndown herbicides get applied to kill all the weeds and vegetation growing the fields so they don’t compete with crops. Some area farmers have had airplanes apply burndowns, and a few spray rigs have been able to get into fields.

But our fields are very, very flat. In many fields, it’s important to clear the residue and flatten the soil to allow for surface drainage. We have heavy clay sub-soil, so drainage tile doesn’t work in this area like it does in the Midwest. In some fields, we actually create furrows for drainage. Drainage is important to protect crop quality. We collect that drainage water in our reservoir to use for irrigation later in the season, protecting both crop and water quality.

Before planting, we also apply fertilizer. Our organic matter content is low, so we apply chicken litter to all our fields the day before or the day of planting. It supplements organic matter and provides phosphorus and potassium for the crops, including soybeans. We also apply dry granular fertilizer to supply nitrogen.

Our goal is to start planting by April 1. We typically plant rice first, but we know that planting soybeans early improves our yields, so we are anxious to get started. Seed treatment technology gives us confidence to plant earlier into cooler soils.

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Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”