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Seed production on pace with tech boost

As corn has been picked out of the fields, the seed for next year is getting packed up. Despite drought, production hasn’t been an issue in central Iowa, leading to no concerns about supply next spring.

“We’ve had some fairly timely rains that has helped,” said Jake Pantry, field production lead at the Bayer Corn Production Facility in Grinnell, Iowa. “We aren’t seeing any concerns on yield. (At the start of October) we still have a third of the crop to bring in the door, but there are no concerns about drought impacting things.”

With the yields expected to come in, it should be a typical year for the facility, receiving nearly 140 trucks per day and producing nearly 2 million seed bags annually, 70% of which are for the DEKALB brand.

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Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday

Video: Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes | Field Talk Friday



Field Talk Friday | Dr. John Murphy | Root Exudates, Soil Biology, and How Plants Recruit Microbes

Most of us spend our time managing what we can see above ground—plant height, leaf color, stand counts, and yield potential. But the deeper you dig into agronomy, the more you realize that some of the most important processes driving crop performance are happening just millimeters below the surface.

In this episode of Field Talk Friday, Dr. John Murphy continues the soil biology series by diving into one of the most fascinating topics in modern agronomy: root exudates and the role they play in shaping the microbial world around plant roots.

Roots are not passive structures simply pulling nutrients out of the soil. They are active participants in the underground ecosystem. Plants constantly release compounds into the soil—sugars, amino acids, organic acids, and other molecules—that act as both energy sources and signals for soil microbes.