Drought Update 1

I just finished listening in on a Purdue conference call addressing the dry conditions we've been having over the last month. To offer a summary:

Corn: According to Bob Nielsen while corn has been hurt some, this isn't critical in most fields yet. He believes that with good rains beginning in the next few days and continuing through the growing season we could still achieve trend yields. As a general statement covering the whole state he thinks the critical period this year will be during pollination from late June through the third week in July, a week or so earlier than usual. In Clinton County I think we're looking at the first two weeks in July. The afternoon leaf rolling we're seeing right now, while a symptom of stress, doesn't indicate a critical yield loss at this time.

Soybeans: Soybean specialist Shaun Casteel says that beans are mostly in a holding pattern right now but should be able to compensate if rains come. We all know that beans can recover fairly well from drought stress, so long as it rains at some point. If plants are severely stressed they may even begin to flower very early but even with flowering beans, if rain comes they will drop those flowers and resumed vegetative growth. Obviously, if they get all the way to setting pods due to this things change. For double crop beans Shaun recommends holding off seeding after wheat in hopes of receiving some moisture but if for some reason you absolutely have to get in the field and it's still dry, you should look at raising your seeding rate to account for some emergence problems which are likely to occur.

Pests: Christian Krupke from the Purdue Entomology Department discussed spider mites in soybeans. Spider mites are a pest we usually don't worry much about as a healthy plant outgrows damage but they can devastate plants which are basically holding as they are now. So far there haven't been many reports of this (I haven't heard of any here) but if the dry weather continues it's hard to believe this won't be a problem before long. Look for bronzing of leaves, beginning at field borders and think about doing some scouting. He has posted a Youtube video which shows how to scout for mites.

Also, if you have Soybean Cyst Nematode issues, this sort of year really brings these out. There's nothing to be done about it for this growing season but if you identify areas where you may have a problem, you can make some decisions about addressing it for next year. Look for plants that aren't growing well (nothing's growing well right now but these would be even worse) and are turning yellow. Damaged areas in a field are typically oval or circular in shape.