Selecting the Right Seed for Your Situation
The number of hybrid and soybean technologies has never been greater. With an increased number of choices, however, comes a growing challenge to identify which traits will provide maximum performance and yield given a grower’s specific field conditions.
Planting corn is very similar to planning your financial portfolio: you want to plan for balance, managing risk and securing performance against a number of unforeseen challenges, including insect and disease pressure and weather. Look for a balance in maturity levels, genetics, and traits.
As you finalize your 2012 seed selections, here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Understanding Genetics Versus Traits – Genetics provide the performance advantage. It doesn’t matter how good a trait is if it’s not supported by solid genetics. “Genetics make yield but traits protect yield.” Also remember the role of genetics in corn-on-corn situations. In corn-on-corn situations, plant high vigor genetics that can tolerate the increased disease pressure.
- Identifying Product Trends – Making seed selections based on one’s most recent experience could risk performance the following year due to the drastic changes in growing conditions because no two years will ever be the same. In 2010, we received excessive rainfall. During the 2011 growing season, we experienced three weeks of 100 plus degree heat.
- Putting Field Data to Work – In the past, we relied almost solely on the knowledge of the seed advisor and the valuable experience of the grower to identify the correct seed for a particular field. Today we have Seed-2-Soil®. Seed advisors can work with data collected from precision ag instruments to provide recommendations that tell growers exactly what seed to place at what population, with more precise guidance on fertilizer and nutrient management.
