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Soybeans Today January 1999

Verification Trials Help Producer Boost Yields

By Rich Maples

Eddie Tackett, Richard Klerk and Frankie Rhudy

Farmers normally spend two years in the Soybean Research Verification Program (SRVP), but Atkins producer Eddie Tackett was granted a third year because of a mistake. A commercial applicator accidentally sprayed the 1997 SRVP field with Facet, a rice herbicide.

"I sent him out there to spray rice, and he mistakenly sprayed the soybean field, which was next to it," says Tackett.

The error made the soybeans unsellable. "They were unusable for either human or animal consumption," says Frankie Rhudy, Pope County agent for the Cooperative Extension Service, University of Arkansas.

"There's no tolerance for Facet."

Even though they knew the contaminated beans couldn't be sold, Tackett, Rhudy and Richard Klerk, an extension agronomist and SRVP coordinator, decided to irrigate 2.9 acres of the 37-acre field using the U of A's computer Irrigation Scheduling Program -- sort of a study within a study.

"We irrigated that small section six times," says Klerk. "That's quite a few times, but we normally water an SRVP field four to five times anyway." The results were dramatic.

Where the field was irrigated according to the scheduling program, the yield was 74.8 bushels per acre. The dryland section made about 38.8 bushels.

"When you cut 75 bushels versus 39 bushels, the economics are there for timely irrigation," says Klerk.

The 1997 SRVP field had full-season soybeans. The 1996 trial field -- the fields are adjacent -- was doublecropped behind wheat.

Tackett says the doublecropped field averaged 55 bushels per acre, a record for the program.

The extension SRVP team suggested Tackett try border irrigation. Instead of building a network of levees as he would for rice, Tackett installed borders 105 feet apart the length of the field. A 1.5-foot slope from the top to the bottom of the quarter-mile long field made the sandy ground ideal for border irrigation.

"You can get water over more area in a given period of time," says Tackett. "It has helped me water small beans, to get the water on and off without scalding them."

Frankie Rhudy, Pope County Extension Agent


SOYVA, the U of A's research-based variety selection program, was used to pick the best varieties for the SRVP fields. Tackett hadn't used SOYVA before, but each spring he had examined the results of the U of A variety performance trials before choosing varieties for his other fields.

"Eddie likes high-producing varieties," says Rhudy. "He shoots to break records."

Tackett says, "I'm high on fertilization. We've soil tested the verification fields three years in a row, and it has proven to me that soil pH and phosphate and potash levels change pretty drastically from one year to the next.

"If you're looking for the highest yields for the least money, it would probably pay to soil sample every year."

Tackett is not quite ready to plant large acreages of Roundup Ready varieties. He says, "I'm waiting for higher yields. I'm just not seeing, in this particular area, the Roundup Ready beans take stress like the drought we've seen this year. But I do like the idea of a one-time application."

Klerk says the Roundup Ready technology would have been helpful in the 1998 SRVP field. "With sicklepod in conventional soybeans, the only post-emergence herbicide that has any effect is Classic, and it has to be sprayed within two weeks after the soybeans and sicklepod emerge.

"With the rains we had early in the season, and with all the other crops Eddie had to deal with, we weren't able to get in and spray with Classic. By the time it dried up enough, the sicklepod was too large for Classic to be effective.

"Had this been a Roundup Ready variety -- though the optimum time for spraying Roundup would have probably passed -- we could have upped the rate and gone after those big sicklepod plants. Roundup is the only product that has any effect on larger sicklepod."

Tackett has completed his three-year stint in the Soybean Research Verification Program, but he's not stopped working with extension. He says he calls Rhudy at the Pope County extension office several times a week during the growing season, and he still has Richard Klerk's phone number just in case.

Soybeans Today January 1999
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