Clemson 2024 Corn and Soybean Field Day set for July 25

Jul 12, 2024

By Denise Attaway

Corn and soybeans are important to the South Carolina economy, with 760,000 acres of corn and soybean planted in South Carolina in 2023, resulting in a $494,834,000 production value.

Research-based information provided by the Clemson University Cooperative Extension Service helps keep these crops growing in the state.

To help growers learn about the latest research, Clemson Extension is holding its annual Corn and Soybean Field Day on July 25 at the Edisto Research and Education Center, 64 Research Road, Blackville, South Carolina 29817. The event gets underway with a visit to the research fields at 8:30 a.m.

Topics covered include double cropping corn and soybeans by Michael Plumblee, Clemson Extension corn and soybean specialist, and Bennett Harrelson, a Clemson doctoral student. Plumblee and Harrelson are looking to generate a set of best management practices for growers using this system.

The field tour will also include a presentation about corn and soybean nematodes and foliar diseases by John Mueller, plant pathologist. Francis Reay-Jones, entomologist, and Tim Bryant, assistant coordinator of the Integrated Pest Management program, will talk about insect management in corn.

Jeremy Greene, entomologist, and Adam Whitfield, a Clemson doctoral student, will talk about insect management in soybeans. Michael Marshall, weed scientist, will give an update on weed management.

Following the field presentations, participants will move indoors to learn about an on-farm assessment of broiler litter in corn from Bhupinder Farmaha, Clemson Extension nutrient management specialist. Nathan Smith, Clemson Extension economist, will talk about irrigation economics.

The field day wraps up with lunch.

Source : clemson.edu

Video: Wheat Yields in USA and China Threatened by Heat Waves Breaking Enzymes

A new peer reviewed study looks at the generally unrecognized risk of heat waves surpassing the threshold for enzyme damage in wheat.

Most studies that look at crop failure in the main food growing regions (breadbaskets of the planet) look at temperatures and droughts in the historical records to assess present day risk. Since the climate system has changed, these historical based risk analysis studies underestimate the present-day risks.

What this new research study does is generate an ensemble of plausible scenarios for the present climate in terms of temperatures and precipitation, and looks at how many of these plausible scenarios exceed the enzyme-breaking temperature of 32.8 C for wheat, and exceed the high stress yield reducing temperature of 27.8 C for wheat. Also, the study considers the possibility of a compounded failure with heat waves in both regions simultaneously, this greatly reducing global wheat supply and causing severe shortages.

Results show that the likelihood (risk) of wheat crop failure with a one-in-hundred likelihood in 1981 has in today’s climate become increased by 16x in the USA winter wheat crop (to one-in-six) and by 6x in northeast China (to one-in-sixteen).

The risks determined in this new paper are much greater than that obtained in previous work that determines risk by analyzing historical climate patterns.

Clearly, since the climate system is rapidly changing, we cannot assume stationarity and calculate risk probabilities like we did traditionally before.

We are essentially on a new planet, with a new climate regime, and have to understand that everything is different now.