The first principle of crop scouting is to determine what is normal and what is not normal. Knowing what a healthy plant looks like is key to identifying seedling disease. When scouting for seedling diseases, look for yellowing, wilted, stunted, dead or missing plants.
In corn, look for discolored or rotten mesocotyls, seminal roots and nodal roots.
In soybeans, look for seedlings that pull easily from the soil, discolored or rotting root tissue, and lesions that form on the taproot or hypocotyl.
Before you head out to the field, there are several tools that are must-haves for early-season crop scouting:
A tape measure to take stand counts
A seed digger, trowel, or spade to dig up seeds or plants to evaluate planting depth, seedling diseases and below-ground feeding insects, like seed corn maggots.
Remember that certain weather and soil conditions favor specific pathogens. Cool and wet soils favor Fusarium and Pythium, warm and wet soils favor Phytophthora, and warm and moist soils favor Rhizoctonia.
It should be noted that a lab diagnosis is needed to confirm what pathogen is causing the symptoms. Knowing what disease(s) are present can help you choose hybrids and varieties that have good disease scores in the future and can guide decisions on the use of fungicide treated seed.
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Planting across Latham Country has been progressing at a rapid pace and it will not be long before post-emergence spraying will begin. When to spray, what to spray, should I spray . . . these are some of the questions growers need to consider before heading to the field. I believe “when to spray” is one of the most critical decisions a grower will make. Damaging or injuring a young plant can have lasting affects that may not be visible to the naked eye. Understanding growth stages and relating this to the labeled requirements is a key to successful growing season. Let’s take a look at corn first.
Labels typically refer to growth stages for application timing and the chart below is a good reference.
Image: University of Illinois
VE Stage – Corn emergence occurs when the coleoptiles reach and break through the soil surface. Normally, corn requires approximately 100-200 GDUs to emerge, which can be four to five days after planting. At this stage, growth is also taking place below the ground as the nodal root system begins to grow.
Emergence may occur as rapidly as four or five days after planting in warm moist soil, or may take three weeks or more in cool soils. A new leaf will appear about every three days during early growth, while later leaves developing during warmer conditions may appear in one to two days. Full season hybrids in the central Corn Belt typically can produce 21 to 22 leaves. Earlier maturing hybrids will produce fewer leaves.
Keep these numbers in mind as you plan out your season and prepare to spray your fields. Within a month after planting, a corn plant can go from the bag to V5-V7 if conditions are favorable.
Soybeans in a given field will not be in the same stage at the same time. When staging a field of soybeans, each V or R stage is defined when 50% or more of the plants in the field are in or beyond that stage. This makes it important to understand staging and development since not every plant in the field will be at the same stage when determining application timing. The chart below is a good reference for staging.
The general rule of thumb is to figure five days between growth stages in soybeans. The most important growth stage is R1 which is classified as one flower open at any node on the main stem. Soybean flowers are very sensitive and herbicide application should be avoided at this stage. R1 can begin before canopy closure and the temptation is there to make that final application before canopy closure. A good pre-plant program can help avoid the need for late season spraying and a few late escapes is not worth the consequences from spraying post-flower.
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When it’s “go time,” you want to make sure that you have the best alfalfa to fit your field and your end use. Not all alfalfa is created equally, so it pays to give special attention to quality and yield.
Perform a soil test, so you know the soil’s pH, potassium and phosphorous levels. Sulfur and boron levels also factor into forage quality and yield. Alfalfa thrives in well-drained soils with a pH between 6.2 and 7.5. Avoid seeding alfalfa into soils that contain residual herbicides from a previous crop. Seeding alfalfa into existing alfalfa fields is discouraged.
Alfalfa seeding varies widely depending on your location. Seeding in the Upper Midwest can be done from mid-April through May. Seeding in June in the northernmost regions is not uncommon. Seeding early into soils that are too cold may result in delayed emergence, which can cause seedling rot and reduced stands. Planting too late may result in dry topsoil, which can also lead to reduced stands.
Precision planting is not just for corn and soybeans. Alfalfa should be seeded about three-eighths to one-half inch below the soil surface. The ideal stand establishment is between 30 and 35 plants per square foot.
Typical seeding rates for alfalfa seeded without a cover crop are between 12 to 15 pounds per acre. Alfalfa seedlings are very cold tolerant but cannot survive prolonged exposure to freezing temperatures.
High-quality seed is the best step you can take to ensure stand establishment! Look to your local Latham® dealer for help from the start.
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When soils thaw in early spring, we can see how our alfalfa crop fared. You can get a pretty good indication of your alfalfa crop’s health from the road. If your field is still brown and the neighbor’s field is green, check for injury or death.
The best way to diagnose winter injury is by digging four to six inches deep and then examining the plants’ roots. Healthy roots should be firm and white in color with little evidence of root rot. Winter-killed roots will have a gray, water-soaked appearance early.
If your alfalfa stand has suffered winter injury, assess the field’s yield potential by determining the number of stems per square foot:
Yield (tons/acre) = (Stems/ft2 x 0.1) + 0.38
This calculation should only be used as a guideline as many factors determine yield. Factors that influence winter injury and yield in alfalfa stands include:
Stand age. Older stands are more likely to winterkill than younger ones.
Variety. Varieties with superior winter-hardiness ratings and a high disease resistance index are less likely to experience winter injury.
Soil pH. Stands growing on soil with a pH about 6.6 are less likely to experience winter injury.
Soil Fertility. Stands with high fertility, particularly potassium, are less likely to experience winter injury than those with low fertility.
Soil moisture. Alfalfa grown on well-drained soils is less prone to winter injury.
Fall soil moisture status. As dehydration is the primary means of tolerating freezing temperatures, stands that go into winter with low soil moisture are better able to lose moisture and are less likely to winterkill.
Cutting management. Both harvest frequency and timing of fall cutting affect alfalfa winter hardiness. The shorter the interval between cuttings, the greater the risk of winter injury. Stands where the last cutting was taken between Sept. 1 and Oct. 15 are at greater risk, as plants are unable to replenish root carbohydrate reserves before winter.
Snow cover. Snow is an excellent insulator. Four inches of snow can result in a 10°F difference in soil temperatures. Stands that were not cut after Sept. 1 or that have at least six inches of stubble retain more snow cover and are less susceptible to winter injury.
While we cannot control what Mother Nature delivers during the winter months, we can take steps to control or reduce alfalfa winter injury. Contact your local Latham® dealer or call our office at 877-GO-LATHAM (877-465-2842); we’d love to assist you with any questions you may have.
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By the time Latham Hi‑Tech Seeds offers a new corn hybrid, the number of places it has traveled in its developmental process is pretty “a-maize-ing.”
Let’s look at the developmental timeline and how your bag of corn seed gets so many frequent flyer miles. It can take at least five years to create a new hybrid with a new seed parent. These new corn lines like to travel. As a breeder, I become the travel agent coordinating their travel plans.
What are some of the popular destinations for these lucky kernels? We use fields in Hawaii, Mexico, Chile and Argentina. By using these countries, we can plant fields year-round to accelerate our development process. In some cases, we can get three growing seasons in one year.
We use these locations to develop new parents, remake successful hybrids, create new experimental hybrids to test each year and produce hybrid for new releases. No one country can efficiently meet all our needs, so using multiple locations allows us to do different processes to deliver a new product to you.
Your family uses passports to travel and gets inspected by the TSA to get on the plane. A corn family needs similar documents for travel. The difference is that your family typically can travel and get into a country within a day. Each seed shipment we send or receive needs its own inspection and unique documentation, depending on where it’s going. Seed is further inspected upon arriving at its destination. This trip can take up to a week or more if its paperwork isn’t accepted. Delays can affect whether the seed arrives home in time.
The next time you look at a bag of Latham brand hybrid seed corn, know that it might have as many airline miles as you do. Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way to collect and use those frequent flyer perks!
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Like our planting and harvest monitors, corn breeding technologies today improve the speed, accuracy (reliability) and cost of identifying, developing and delivering improved genetics to your farm gate. In this article, I’ll try to briefly describe a few of the most widely used tech tools in developing Latham Hybrids. Like electronic tools, they can be a distraction standing alone, but when linked together into a systematic process they create a powerful platform for continuous improvement.
Unlike traditional methods, “Dihaploid Breeding” (DH) creates homozygous (genetically fixed) male or female corn inbreds quickly. What once took five generations of manual self-pollination can now be created in just two or three generations. Not only do DH’s speed the creation of new inbreds but because they are uniform, they improve and speed field testing required to identify performance. DH delivers inbreds faster (commonly called “instant inbreds”), with near-perfect genetic uniformity at a moderate cost.
Sorting all those new inbreds can become a bottleneck in finding commercially viable candidates. Similar to trying to find NFL players among thousands of college athletes, corn breeding also requires a large pool of candidate inbreds — as quickly as possible. Thankfully, selecting for inbreds with “Favorable DNA” (genes with proven performance) has never been easier or cheaper. Breeders used to spend thousands of dollars to identify a few genetic markers on a single inbred to make associations with key traits such as yield or disease tolerance. Today, we are fast approaching a capability to sequence an entire corn inbred genome (all genes) for less than a dollar. Considering that corn has more genes than humans (on fewer chromosomes), detailed genetic data can enable breeders to quickly select best “candidate” inbreds.
To speed development even further, “Predictive Breeding” can now use genetic data to now simulate some field performance prior to testing in the field. While this will never replace actual field testing predictions, it enables breeders to discard the “chaff” from the wheat — inbreds with low probability of good performance before they’re ever field tested.
Lastly, once commercial lines are identified, “Embryo Rescue” can cycle four generations of trait conversion in the lab and greenhouse in a single year, to deliver trait conversions in two years instead of what used to take four to five years.
None of these tools stand alone, but when paired together they create a powerful process to speed development, improve uniformity and reduce developmental cost of delivering improved Latham genetics to your farm.
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“Price is what you pay, but value is what you get.”
This adage holds true for corn silage research, too. That’s why Latham Hi‑Tech Seeds builds knowledge from previous years of corn silage research.
Latham Seeds has several locations across the Midwest where we evaluate corn silage grain yield plus these three important factors:
1. Economic impact to the livestock producers. Corn silage and alfalfa are more complex than cash grain crops as we look for high value in the fields and at the feed bunk. Research continually refines the impacts on beef and dairy on tonnage, fiber digestibility and starch digestibility.
Tonnage. Corn silage dry matter is comprised of about 50% grain
and 50% stover. Modern dual-purpose hybrid genetics tend to have a lot of grain yield capacity, which contributes favorably to overall yield. Additionally, we look for hybrids that are robust in plant structure to provide additional tonnage benefits.
Economic Benefit to yield. Corn silage price per ton at 65% whole-plant moisture (WPM) is about 10 times the market price of corn. At $6 per bushel for corn, that’s $60 per ton for corn silage. There are many pricing variations. Depending on the growing season and location, tonnage can range from 20 to more than 30 tons per acre. A typical acre will gross $1,200 to $1,800 per
acre. Truly, every ton counts.
Starch digestibility. This can be a bit complex, which is why most seed companies don’t consider this factor. This is a high priority at Latham Seeds as starch is 50% of the plant’s dry matter. Indeed, it’s complex. When the plant stores starch in the kernel, there is a relationship between genetics, growing season and fertility. Drought, years with low heat units and soils with low fertility can contribute to lighter test weights, but starch tends to be more digestible vs. heavy test weights. Our goal is to index our hybrids over multiple years and multiple environments to help maximize the energy from every molecule of starch, so it doesn’t pass unused through the animal in manure.
Economic Benefit to Starch Digestibility. There is a lot of research about starch digestibility in beef and dairy. Less than 3% fecal starch is optimum. A study at University of Pennsylvania revealed a 0.72 pounds of milk/day decrease for every 1% increase of fecal starch. This equate to about $65,000 annually for a 1,000-cow dairy.
Fiber Digestibility. Imagine the structure a corn plant must have to keep the plant upright and stand through high winds. The base of the corn plant contains a high amount of lignin, a structural component that keeps the plant upright. We can measure how much is in the corn silage, as well how much is digestible. The goal is to have as much as the fiber digestible as possible. Generally, a cow that consumes more and uses more of what is consumed is more productive. Some studies show that cows that use more of what is consumed also produce less manure.
Economic Benefit to Fiber Digestibility. Generally, every point increase in fiber digestibility on a feed report is neutral detergent fiber digestibility (NDFD). A dairy cow can produce up to one-half pound more milk per day. When you factor that across 1,000 cows in a dairy for 365 days, having 1 point better digestion can have an economic impact of approximately $45,000 per year!
In review, consider factors beyond raw grain yield when evaluating corn silage hybrids. Selecting hybrids that have demonstrated better digestibility can be helpful to a livestock producer’s bottom line. Feel free to contact me if I can be of assistance as you’re writing early orders.
Harvest Corn Silage at Optimal Milkline to Add to Your Bottom Line
Corn silage season is approaching quickly, so it’s a good time to review basics like how to determine when to harvest.
As the kernel matures from the dented cap, the milkline moves toward the kernel tip where it attaches to the cob. Harvesting at 50% milkline generally achieves approximately 65% whole-plant moisture. Optimal harvest for bunks/bags is 65 to 70% whole-plant moisture, or one-half to one-fourth milkline. Optimal harvest for stave upright silos is 63 to 65% whole-plant moisture, or three-fourths to one-half milkline.
Think of the kernel as a sponge. As the milkline develops, the kernel absorbs more moisture from the chopped residue. If you harvest silage corn that is too wet, juicing can occur. Inadequate fermentation and mold development also may result. It is advantageous to do a formal moisture check using a koster crop tester, for example.
One of the biggest drivers for milkline development is weather. Moisture, fertility, heat and plant health are four big drivers affecting milk line movement. When the plant is at full photosynthetic capacity, the corn silage whole-plant moisture can decline daily from 0.5 to one percent. Photosynthetic activity slows when the weather is cold, wet or cloudy, causing the corn plant to mature slower. Look at the forecast as harvest approaches because many changes can occur in five days.
Another way to improve the quality of corn silage is by raising the chopping height as most lignin accumulates in the lower portion of the stalk. Lignin is the structural component that helps plants stand. It’s a tradeoff to find the correct cutting height to maximize forage quality and to capture the most tonnage.
Some forage producers increase cutting height to help reduce moisture, so they can get started earlier. Raising the chop height 12 inches in a Penn State study left about 0.6 ton in the field but forage quality improved. Improved quality produces more milk for dairy farmers!
With everything from groceries to gas on the rise, we understand the need to question whether expenses are necessary or justifiable. Below is information to support why fertilizing alfalfa in summer and applying fungicide to silage hybrids warrants your attention.
Fertilizing alfalfa in the summer helps fill the cellular gas tank of the plant’s crown, which helps increase its yield potential for the current growing season, as well as increases its potential for winterhardiness. All alfalfa benefits from in-season fertility, regardless of cutting schedule or strategy.
Summer seeding is fast approaching. July 20 through August 1 are key seeding dates for Latham Hi‑Tech Seeds’ northern territory, which includes North Dakota, as well as northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. August 1-15 is the range of recommended alfalfa seeding dates for southern Minnesota and southern Wisconsin while most alfalfa growers in Iowa typically seed in mid-August. Look at this graph.
Sourced from University of Wisconsin – Extension
Due to our late spring, many Midwest alfalfa growers have moved seeding alfalfa to this fall. The success of fall seeding depends on moisture. It’s important that alfalfa germinates quickly, develops a crown, and builds enough crown carbohydrates to overwinter.
Latham® AlfaShieldTM is a great seed treatment to help facilitate quick emergence. Think of AlfaShield as wrapping your alfalfa seed in a sponge. It helps protect the fragile germ of the seed. It also helps draw moisture to the seed, which is particularly important when seeding into moisture-stressed soils. Summers-seeded alfalfa is up against the time clock; approximately four to six weeks of significant growth needed to develop the crown before frost. The 2022 and 2023 Latham product guides include a dry matter (DM) ton advantage of AlfaShield compared to the old industry standard. AlfaShield has a bigger advantage in moisture-stressed soils.
Summer Considerations for Corn Silage
When I walk fields and test plots in the fall, I note a hybrid’s stay-green ability. I believe this observation relates to plant health. Healthy plants tend to have a lower probability of developing infection, which can create the environment for molds and mycotoxins to grow. Fungicide application promotes plant health and can boost yield and corn silage quality. Healthy, dark green, disease-free leaves are like solar panels capturing more sunlight for more photosynthesis. Healthy leaves also build more yield, as well as reduce chances for mold and mycotoxins to develop.
There are a variety of fungicides to select from, all of which inspire improved plant health. I have the most experience with BASF fungicide corn silage research relating to improved corn silage tonnage and forage quality. Several of the studies have resulted in two to three more tons of corn silage per acre plus the potential of reduced molds and mycotoxins is encouraging. With current commodity prices, that’s around an extra $140 to $210/acre in corn silage tonnage!
Investing fungicide is worth consideration for livestock producers, who raise their own forages. Molds and mycotoxins can be more challenging to quantify. When fed to livestock, however, they can severely impair animal performance. In severe instances, it can lead to mortality.
Feel free to contact your local Latham rep with any questions about summer fertilizing or fungicide application. You’re also welcome to email me at coreyc@lathamseeds.com. I’m always happy to visit with Midwest farmers who are interested in raising better meat, milk and eggs!
Phil Long is in the field this week looking at the rapid growth phase of corn. He also shares what to scout for this time of year and how to send in a proper tissue test. Check out the video or read the article below to learn more.
With current input and commodity prices, we must get the most from each crop. To help your crop reach its potential, start with fertility. Regular soil tests are great, but the next step is in-season tissue testing.
Tissue testing supplements your soil test. You shouldn’t take a tissue test without a current soil test in hand. Once you take the tissue test, compare it to your soil test. See where the two tests match. Then make plans to address those needs either this season or next season.
Tissue testing every two weeks shows how your crop is developing throughout the season. If you only can tissue test once or twice, I recommend pulling a sample early (V4 for corn or soybeans) and before grain fill (R1 for corn and R3 for soybeans). This will give you a good understanding of what needs are not being met during crucial development stages.
Here are some tips on how to use tissue testing to your advantage this season:
Sample whole plant (above ground) when shorter than eight inches. Once a plant gets to reproduction, use the leaf below and opposite the ear leaf for corn. For soybeans, use the most recently matured leaf (usually the 2nd or 3rd leaf from top of the plant). Take at least 15 leaves/plants per sample.
Take multiple samples to compare locations in the field and to look for consistencies. If you are looking at a trouble spot, be sure to also take a sample from a good spot in the field. Send samples in a breathable bag (not a plastic Ziploc bag), or your results may not be good.
Compare back to your soil test. Keep environmental conditions in mind at the time of sampling. Most labs will categorize the nutrient levels based on what growth stage the plant was in when sampled. Tissue testing is like taking your temperature; the tissue test can reveal consistencies in a field that must be addressed to break that next yield barrier.
