Minnesota Crop News

By Angie Peltier, UMN Extension crops educator, Anna Cates, PhD, UMN Extension soil health specialist, Monica Schauer, University of Wisconsin-Madison research specialist, and Eric Yu, UMN graduate student On February 22, 2023, Anna Cates, Monica Schauer and Eric Yu joined UMN Extension crops educator Liz Stahl for a conversation about frequently asked questions regarding cover crops. This was an episode in the 2023 Strategic Farming: Let’s talk crops! series of webinars. To watch the full episode:  https://youtu.be/XEYbPRzbGN4 Cover crops perform ecosystem services Even in fields that aren’t tilled, after harvest there can often be little crop residue left. Soil that is not covered is exposed to wind and falling raindrops, both of which can contribute to soil erosion. Cover crops are crops that are grown not to harvest in whole or part, but rather to cover the soil during late fall through early spring when a cash crop is not being grown. In areas in which corn is grown for eithe...

By: Brad Carlson, Extension educator The 2022 growing season was the second year in a row in which Minnesota experienced dry conditions across a majority of the state’s corn acres. The effects of drought extend beyond the growing season, with potential impacts on the following year’s crop. One area of interest is the potential for carryover nitrogen in the soil profile. Most of Minnesota’s soils (coarse-textured sands excluded) mineralize significant amounts of nitrogen from soil organic matter throughout the summer. This nitrate is consumed by the growing crop until the crop reaches maturity. Typically, plant uptake of nitrate slows significantly around the first week of September and comes to a halt a few weeks after that. Mineralization of organic matter continues, however, with significant amounts of nitrate accumulating between early September and late October. Because the loss process of nitrate is water-based and requires saturation of the soil, a typical wet spring will...

Are you an irrigator concerned about matching your irrigation with crop water use? Are you wondering how to improve water use efficiency and reduce water costs? The University of Minnesota Extension is offering the Minnesota Irrigator Program (MIP), to help answer these questions and more. This 3-day event will be held in-person at U of M Extension’s Regional Office in Farmington, MN on Wednesdays, March 1st, 8th, and 15th from 8:30am-3:30pm. Breakfast and lunch will be provided. Register now With its sandy soils and limited precipitation, irrigation is a key component of production agriculture in the central region of Minnesota. Programming will include a discussion of irrigation systems, how to use soil moisture sensors on your farm, irrigation scheduling, and special topics like variable rate irrigation and remote sensing. In addition to learning about the most effective irrigation management, MIP attendance is one of the requirements to attain the Irrigation Endorsement of the Mi...

Dr. Anthony Hanson Extension Educator & Assistant Professor - Field Crops Integrated Pest Management Cold winters help prevent many potential pest insects from establishing in Minnesota or require species that cannot survive our winters, like potato leaf hopper or black cutworm, to migrate up from southern states. Extreme cold can also knock back species that are established here. Generally, cold weather is troublesome for farmers and livestock, but the cold can be a welcome event for pest management. Each year, I try to get a rough snapshot of how winter may have helped us out with reducing pest insect populations by using temperatures on the coldest night of the year. 2019 was a prominent example where much of the state was below -30 °F which caused significant mortality for pests like soybean aphid. So far, Feb. 3 has been the coldest day during winter 2022-23 for much of the state with morning low air temperatures below -20°F in the northern half of the state and near -1...

By: Anna Cates, Extension soil health specialist Soil health can be measured in many ways . Often, tests estimate the capacity of soil biology, and the Haney test is one way of estimating how much food, in the form of organic carbon (C) and nitrogen (N), is available to microbes in the soil. Recently, UMN colleagues and I applied the Haney Soil Health Test to silty clay loam soils with and without tile drainage at the Northwest Research and Outreach Center in Crookston. We compared drained and undrained plots to see if changing the soil water regime with drainage would alter microbial activity enough to detect differences in the Haney Soil Health Test. No differences with drainage were found, but measurements of organic C and N were greater in April or May than summer or fall sampling. Seasonal variability and N supply Organic C and N pools measured by the test are mostly decomposed, soluble in water, and ready for microbes to take up as food. Other research in Wisconsin and Ohio al...

Phyllis Bongard, Educational content development and communications specialist, and Debalin Sarangi, Extension weed specialist Multiple herbicide-resistant waterhemp infestations in a Renville County, MN soybean field. Photo: D. Sarangi Weeds take the top spot as the most problematic pest problem farmers manage. Evolution and spreading of herbicide-resistant weeds, strategies for weed control in conventional corn, and preserve the new products or premixes for future use contribute to the challenges. Failures to control waterhemp – a troublesome weed - are frequently reported in Minnesota. Are failures due to increased herbicide resistance or other application factors? To help answer this, Dr. Debalin Sarangi, University of Minnesota Extension weed specialist, collected 120 waterhemp samples from 56 counties for resistance screening. Waterhemp resistance screening  Each waterhemp population was exposed to full (1x) and high (3x) rates of eight commonly used postemergence herbicides....

Photo: Claire LaCanne By Angie Peltier, UMN Extension crops educator, Seth Naeve, UMN Extension soybean agronomist and Daniel Kaiser, UMN Extension soil fertility specialist On February 8, 2023, Seth Naeve, Ph.D., UMN Extension soybean agronomist and Daniel Kaiser, Ph.D., UMN Extension soil fertility specialist, joined UMN Extension crops educator Lizabeth Stahl for a conversation about the latest research on biologicals for corn and soybean. This was the fifth episode of the 2023 Strategic Farming: Let’s talk crops! webinars in this series. To watch this episode: https://youtu.be/TzwHTP5xTk8 Biological seed treatments for soybean In recent years, the marketplace of biological products on the market has been growing and is projected to be a $12-13 billion industry in the US by 2024. Biological seed treatments claim to improve nitrogen (N) fixation, assimilate organic and inorganic phosphorus (P), increase nutrient use efficiency or uptake, stimulate root growth or expand root ab...

Figure 1.  Ice sheet damage to a field of alfalfa.   By: Craig Sheaffer, Nathan Drewitz, and Troy Salzer Ice sheeting can have a lethal effect on forage crop stands (Figure 1). Typically, ice sheeting occurs on poorly drained areas of a field where water congregates, but sometimes it can occur over an entire field. Ice sheets form following freezing of standing water resulting from melting of snow or from rainfall in winter and spring followed by freezing temperatures. In other parts of the state ice sheeting occurs in areas where the soil is frozen and ponds until the frost leaves the soil allowing the water to infiltrate. While once viewed as a problem mainly in central and southern Minnesota, ice sheeting has become a much more significant issue in the last 15-20 years in northeast Minnesota due to changes in snow fall patterns. Ice sheet damage is related to its thickness, duration, and timing during the dormant season. Mechanism of ice damage Because ice has high t...

In this episode of the Nutrient Management Podcast, we’re talking about watershed planning and nitrate reduction. What are watershed plans and what goes into them? How do watershed plans affect nutrient management decision-making? What should farmers know about edge-of-field and nutrient management planning in relation to water quality goals? TRANSCRIPT Guests: Wayne Cords, Minnesota Pollution Control Agency Brad Carlson, Extension nutrient management specialist (Mankato) Jeff Strock, Extension soil scientist (Lamberton) Additional resources: Advanced Nitrogen Smart , Feb. 13 - March 17 at various locations around the state Minnesota Nutrient Reduction Strategy (MPCA) One Watershed, One Plan (MN BWSR) Where Can I Get Support? (MN BWSR) Minnesota State Programs (USDA FSA) --- For the latest nutrient management information, subscribe to the Nutrient Management Podcast wherever you listen and never miss an episode! And don't forget to subscribe to the Minnesota Crop News daily o...

By: Angie Peltier, UMN Extension crops educator On February 1, 2023, Aaron Lorenz, Ph.D., UMN soybean breeder and geneticist and Rex Bernardo, Ph.D., UMN professor, endowed chair and corn geneticist, joined UMN Extension crops educator Lizabeth Stahl for a conversation about short-statured corn and SCN-resistant soybean breeding efforts. This was the fourth episode of the 2023 S trategic Farming: Let’s talk crops! webinars in this series.   Alternatively, watch the episode here:  https://youtu.be/_R9Hbb7M5lA Short-statured corn While known by different names such as dwarf, semi-dwarf, or short corn, short-statured corn is corn that does not grow as tall as the typical Midwestern field corn hybrid. The concept of breeding shorter crops to combat production challenges has been around for long time; for example, short-statured rice supports adding additional nitrogen to improve grain without increasing lodging potential. While research on short-statured corn began in in the 1960’...

By: Dan Kaiser, Extension nutrient management specialist, and Hannah Swartzentruber, Central Lakes College Ag and Energy Center Dry beans are an important commodity crop in Minnesota, with around 250,000 acres planted in 2020 and 2021. No major research efforts have been put into the evaluation of the fertilizer guidelines for dry bean in Minnesota in nearly twenty years, underscoring the need for an update. Why is new research needed? Current fertilizer guidelines for dry beans in Minnesota are yield goal based so technically any dry bean classes that would be higher yielding would necessitate modifications in a dry bean grower’s normal fertilizer practice. However, in researching other crops, we have found that yield potential is not strongly related to the amount of fertilizer required. This has caused a shift away from fertilizer guidelines based on expected yield, especially for nitrogen. While it is plausible that nitrogen rates required to maximize dry bean yield have not change...