By Mark Licht
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Cropping Systems Agronomist Mark Licht is asked every year for information on the developmental stages of corn and soybeans.
In response, Licht has created corn and soybean quick reference materials that cover various aspects of staging, growth and development and are available through the Extension Store. Each publication contains two different documents, one covering staging and the other highlighting key growth stages. The publications are supplements to the larger Corn Growth and Development and the Soybean Growth and Development publications.
“Farmers and agronomists I talk with want to take an abridged version of the longer publications and my presentations with them,” Licht said. “These new publications allow them to take that information with them in a user friendly way. This is an effort to help farmers and agronomists determine key growth stages more accurately to facilitate better decision making.”
Both publications provide images from seed to maturity. This allows farmers to track their crop’s growth and development in an easy-to-use fashion.
Information on each stage of growth is included, with benchmarks the growing crop should be reaching clearly marked.