The final tally hasn’t been published yet, but 2022 will go down as the new record high year for soybean yields in Western Canada, mainly southern Manitoba. Statistics Canada’s latest provincial estimate came in at 43 bushels/acre, up from 27 bu/ac in 2021 (see graph below), but Dennis Lange, Manitoba Agriculture’s pulse specialist, says he… Read More
Category: Soybean School West
More and more cases of waterhemp are being discovered, and last year, Manitoba saw its first confirmed finding of Palmer amaranth. As many producers are painfully aware — both weeds can be extra difficult to control, and herbicide resistance has only increased. Manitoba’s neighbour to the south is no stranger to either weed, with the… Read More
Researchers at Laval University in Quebec have developed a hydroponic lab test that could allow growers and agronomists to better deploy genetic resistance and tolerance in the fight against phytophthora root rot in soybeans. There are three main ways to curb phytophthora, explains Geneviève Arsenault-Labrecque, co-founder of AYOS Technologies, a spinoff founded by students at Laval, in… Read More
Grasshoppers are usually associated with dry conditions and go hand-in-hand with drought. And yet, grasshoppers are once again showing up in high numbers and causing crop damage in areas of the Eastern Prairies where there’s been flooding, and more than enough rain and soil moisture for the first half of the growing season. Why is… Read More
The principles around fertility and nutrient uptake in soybeans are the same, whether you’re farming in Ontario, the U.S., or Western Canada, but there are some unique or special factors to be considered by soybean growers in western and northern growing areas. Following up on this Soybean School episode from last month with Horst Bohner… Read More
2021 will certainly be remembered for the drought in Western Canada, but there were other factors, such as late frost, damaging winds, and new pests that also challenged the soybean crop on the eastern side of the Prairies. Despite all of those stresses, there was still a crop to harvest in most cases, with yields… Read More
Drought in 2021 has caused some crops to not use all of the available nutrients in soil, and soil tests suggest that some fields have elevated soil nitrate levels. High soil nitrate levels can pose a problem for next year’s soybean crop, as they can prevent nodulation from happening which could prove a problem later… Read More
Adequate root nodulation is critical for filling soybean pods with seed, as there’s a strong correlation between the number of nodules on soybean plants’ roots and yield. But in a dry year, the number of nodules might not matter quite as much, as soybeans can compensate for reduced nodulation by producing larger nodules. As part… Read More
It’s often noted that soybean yield is made with rain in August, but moisture has been scarce throughout the entire growing season for soybeans on the Prairies this year. While there are areas that have received more moisture, many fields in Manitoba are showing tell-tale signs of drought stress as they move through the critical… Read More
A spring of extremes — first cold, dry and windy, then hot, dry and windy — has resulted in weeds getting a head start in many soybean fields in the soybean-growing areas of Western Canada. While wind and cold temperatures delayed burnoff applications at the start of the season, questions about when to spray in… Read More
Resistance to Group 2 herbicides has been common and assumed in many cases with kochia in Western Canada for years, but weed survey results show glyphosate (Group 9) resistance in the invasive tumbleweed species has exploded in recent years. In 2013, less than 1 per cent of kochia populations sampled by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada… Read More
Whether you’re an experienced soybean grower, or are looking to get into this interesting leguminous oilseed crop, there’s always something to learn. In this episode of Soybean School, we take a look back at the past year’s soybean season in Manitoba — what went right, what went wrong, and what kind of knowledge we gleaned… Read More
The number of soybean acres in Western Canada has declined to less than half of what it was when acreage peaked in 2017 — dropping every year since then — but there are expectations that acres have likely hit a floor in 2020. In this follow-up episode to our last Soybean School on soybean maturity… Read More
It’s a colourful time of year as leaves start to turn yellow, then brown, and then drop to the ground — not only on trees, but also in soybean fields. When moisture has not been a limiting factor, differences in days-to-maturity between varieties can be quite eye-catching heading into the final weeks of the growing… Read More
Sudden death syndrome (SDS), caused by a fusarium species in soil, needs cool and moist conditions to thrive. It also needs an entry point, and soybean cyst nematodes (SCN) make those for the pathogen in roots of soybean when they attack the crop. Effectively managing SCN, therefore, is just one part of the puzzle in… Read More