Producers Blog

Aaron Ahrenholz (Sales Agronomist, Region 2 – Minnesota)

As I am writing this the first real snow of the year is on the ground, reminding us that winter is not far away. Some areas of the state are done with harvest, while most others can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It definitely has been a trying year, but for the most part yields this fall were good with many reports of bean yields being much higher than anticipated.

Harvest started with yields for soybeans being higher than most of us were expecting. As I looked at fields this summer, the beans didn’t have a lot of height to them as most were planted much later than normal, thus pod counts were lower. But timely late summer rains helped put some clusters of pods on top and pod fill was excellent (for what its worth, I think we will see some large seed sizes in beans this next spring), thus bringing us some nice yields. 0301R2 had another impressive year this year in the early maturity group, following up a strong performance from 2012. 1002NR2 looks to be a nice addition to our lineup in this maturity range, bringing us excellent IDC, SCN protection and good stress tolerance. 1601NR2 and 1900NR2 had an outstanding year again. These products were in the top 3 in many plots this fall. And on the later side, 2101NR2 had a nice year, bringing a solid defensive package and still able to bring big yields in the right environment.

Corn yields this fall were all over the board, with those that were fortunate enough to catch some timely rains seeing some nice yields while others that were not so fortunate seeing yields lower than normal. This year definitely proved that diversifying your portfolio of products is wise, as the timing of the heat in August had some adverse effects on hybrids depending on what stage of flowering the hybrid was at. At the time, we all wanted heat to help push the crop along as the later planting dates had us wondering if we would black layer in time. But knowing what we know now, with a much later than normal killing frost, I think we would have been better off turning the heat down at flowering and extending the time needed to reach black layer. Again, another reminder that Mother Nature is in control.

Producers Hybrids performance was good again this year, with a few new hybrids bringing added strength to our already solid lineup. On the early side, 4183VT2RIB looks to be a great addition to our lineup. It brings good emergence, flowers early for its RM, and handled the drought stress well. It also looks to have a little better drydown than 4103VT2RIB. XP4938STX, which will be available as 4933VT2RIB, is another new product that has looked good in plots all year long. It handled the drought stress very well this year and has been bringing big yields this fall. Couple that with good roots and stalks, and it brings a nice package on any farm. 5634VT3PRIB has had another great year this year. This product did very well in the NET trials in 2012 and looks to be as good if not better this year in the NET trials and P3 plots. It brings excellent roots and stalks, good drydown and has even topped a few plots with hybrids in it as late as 103-105RM, so it has the potential to bring big yields. Both 5898STXRIB and 6108STXRIB have followed up last year’s great performance with another solid showing this fall.

I have been very happy with the performance of both corn and soybeans this past year in our Producers Hybrids lineup. I know that all of us want to see our products on the top of every plot we are in, but unfortunately that isn’t possible. This year we have seen more variability in plots than in years past, so we need to keep in mind that we must use multi year data when we can, and again sell a diversified package to our customers. Thanks for all of your hard work that you do for Producers Hybrids.