Achieving High-Yield Soybeans

Our soybean breeding engine is one of our best assets at Pioneer. Whether you are planting conventional or traited soybeans, we continue to make gains to many disease tolerances. You will find ratings across all key soybean diseases to help with seed selection to protect your yield.

We also have the most advanced and flexible herbicide trait for soybeans on the market – Enlist E3^® soybeans. Herbicide resistant weeds are a struggle every year and having a system that is flexible and helps provide an herbicide program with multiple modes of action is beneficial for growers.

There are plenty of agronomics one needs to consider for higher yielding soybeans. Harvest standability is one of the most critical. Typically, soybeans that lodge in the fall will get disease, resulting in lost yield from the disease or your combine header won’t be able to pull them into the combine.

Knowing your field history for diseases and soil types will help you look for the right agronomics in a soybean.

• Plant early – this allows for more branches and nodes per plant to help increase yield. When Pioneer researchers looked at the most trial locations that broke 100 bu/A from 2021-2023, they found that the majority were planted in the last half of April through the first half of May.

• Always use LumiGEN^® seed treatments to protect from early season diseases.
• Review last year’s corn yields – did you leave enough fertilizer out there to raise 100 bu/A soybeans? A lot of times we have better than expected corn yields that potentially utilize the Phosphorus and Potassium we were counting on utilizing the next year for our soybeans. For this reason, I recommend doing a soil test.
• Consider a timely harvest and plant different maturity groups to minimize harvest losses due to head shatter and soybeans getting too dry.

Rates have trended lower in recent years, but research and weigh checks over 100 bu/A has indicated that optimum rates are around 140,000 seeds per acre. We also like to increase seeding rates in less productive environments. Consider your unique circumstances ahead of planting.