By Nicolle Ritchie and Angie Gradiz
Weather
Temperatures started out mild this week before climbing into the mid-80s, and storms on Monday brought precipitation to much of the region. The upcoming week will remain pretty similar to the past couple days temperature-wise. Precipitation is expected heading into the weekend, but otherwise it will be a dry and sunny week.
Crops and pests
More soybeans have moved into R5 (seed 1/8 inch long within pod). Others remain in R3 and R4 (pod 3/16 inch and pod 3/4 inch, respectively). R3 is the last effective stage to apply a white mold preventative fungicide. The Crop Protection Network’s Crop Risk Tool showed high risk of white mold development on irrigated soybeans and low on non-irrigated soybeans in southwest Michigan for the past week. While non-irrigated soybeans are at a lower risk of white mold development, they may be showing signs of drought stress such as flipped or rolled leaves after the week of mostly dry weather.
Double cropped soybeans following wheat progressed nicely over the past week.
By now, most of the corn throughout the region has started pollination, and some fields have moved into kernel development stages. Male row destruction in seed corn started, and detasseling is starting to wrap up.
Source : msu.edu