A34-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, November 22, 2003
Thumbs-Up For Crops Despite Performance Challenges
COLUMBUS, Ohio With
late plantings, excessive rainfall,
a myriad of insects and diseases
and poor plant development, it
seemed Ohio com and soybean
growers would be throwing in the
towel on another disappointing
season.
But to the surprise of many,
Ohio’s top agronomic crops are
outperforming expectations with
record yields projected. Accord
ing to the Ohio Agricultural Sta
tistics Service, as of Sept. 1 the
com harvest was projected at 145
bushels per acre. If the number
stays tme, it would make it
Ohio's second-highest harvest in
history behind the 147 bushels
per acre harvested in 2000. Soy
bean yields are projected at 44
bushels per acre, nearly an all
time high- By comparison, Ohio
growers harvested 88 bushels per
acre of com and 30 bushels per
acre of soybeans last year.
Only a small percentage of the
crops have been harvested so far,
but Ohio State University agron
omists like what they see.
“The soybean crop is a bit of a
surprise. The crop is turning out
better than expected despite the
weather and diseases,” said Ohio
State Extension agronomist Jim
Beuerlein. “Every time we go
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through one of these years we are
amazed at the resiliency of the
soybean crop.”
Excessive rainfall throughout
much of the growing season did
little to impact the crop’s devel
opment. Early-planted fields (late
April through May) are pulling
off 40-plus bushel-per-acre yields.
Soybeans planted after June IS
may have been damaged by the
earlier-than-normal frost that hit
Ohio the beginning of October.
The later the planting, the great
er the loss due to frost, said
Beuerlein.
“Overall, we had a lot of good
things happen to us that’s no
weeds, good stands and despite a
lot of rain, it was good rainfall
distribution,” Beuerlein said.
Rains did bring disease, and
soybeans were plagued with plen
ty of pathogens. Even so, the crop
performed well, said Ohio State
plant pathologist Anne Dorrance.
“It was a very challenging year
in that samples we received had
more than one pathogen associat
ed with it,” said Dorrance, with
the Ohio Agricultural Research
and Development Center in
Wooster, Ohio. “But all these
pathogens tend to be associated
with poor drainage, something
that growers can remedy by ad
justing drain tiles or taking mea
sures to reduce compaction.”
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In addition to the common
Phytophthora root rot, soybeans
were also affected by Sclerotinia
stem rot, a disease not seen in
Ohio for several years, and sud
den death syndrome, present in
more acres this year than ever re
corded.
“We had all these diseases out
there, and in some areas there are
dead spots and the beans are
stunted and not maturing, but
overall the bean fields look fairly
good,” said Dorrance. “Soybeans
have an interesting ability to
compensate for lost neighbors.
They will get very bushy and
take up the space where other
plants have been. So at 100,000
plants per acre you will get yield
equal to what you would get at
200,000 plants per acre.”
Dorrance said wise selection of
varieties with a good resistance
package to many of the plant
pathogens helped boost the crop
from under dire environmental
conditions. But growers now
need to look to next year.
“What we’ve done is increase
the population of pathogens in
those fields for next year,” said
Dorrance. “So the next thing
growers need to do is to rotate
their crops. Wheat is an excellent
crop to put in those soybean
fields. It helps to change the flora
can now register their business
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“Farmers who have thought of
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site as a search tool,” Roth ex
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this is another place to
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soybean cyst nematode, as well as
prevents the rapid increase of
Phytophthora.”
For those growers who are un
able to get wheat in the ground,
planting com or alfalfa makes a
good substitute.
The com crop is also faring
well, according to Ohio State
agronomist Peter Thomison.
“With the environmental condi
tions we’ve had, the com is turn
ing out to be better than we had
expected,” he said.
The crop continues to be about
a week behind in development
due to late planting and a shal
low root system, but some of the
major issues concerning agron
omists have yet to become wide
spread problems.
“Maturity is one issue we are
concerned about because of the
fairly cool growing season. The
crop has not accumulated as
many heat units as we would
have liked it to,” said Thomison.
“But the crop is showing what
some of Ohio State’s research has
supported: that com plants when
planted on late dates can accom
modate a shorter growing season
by maturing with fewer heat
units.”
Another issue is how fast the
corn will dry down due to the
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late-season rains and continued
soggy soils. “Surprisingly, a lot of
the cornfields planted later than
normal and wetter than normal
have been drying down faster
than expected,” said Thomison.
But he urged growers to har
vest com as quickly as possible to
avoid any problems with stalk
quality.
“A lot of fields are standing
well, but we know there is stalk
rot in these fields because of the
rains we had during the growing
season. If you pinch the lower
nodes some stalks will collapse
very easily,” said Thomison. “It
won’t take much for heavy winds
or heavy rains to blow the stalks
over, so we are encouraging
growers to get out there as soon
as possible and earmark those
fields which they think they may
have problems with.”
Northern com leaf blight, an
thracnose stalk rot and top die
back are just some diseases that
have predisposed the com crop to
stalk quality problems.
The early frost may also have
impacted late-planted com, said
Thomison. The extent of the in
jury to the com plants is still not
known and how well the crop
will yield because of the damage
remains a wildcard.
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