Join Emily as she talks to Jeff, Nevin, and Bob about their research project updates.
Transcript has been edited slightly for clarity.
0:19 Emily: Hi everyone, and welcome to Farm Sci-Ed, the show where we go into the science and education behind farming. I’m Emily Stine and today we’ll be talking to Jeff, Nevin, and Bob about what’s been going on in their fields over the course of the last month of August. So sit back, relax, and let’s go find out what they’ve been up to.
0:36 So Jeff how has your research been going?
Jeff: Well, in August in our relay study, we’ve continued to sample all the plots with the exception of the wheat only plot, as the wheat’s gone. So our continuing sampling has been primarily in the bean only and a relay treatments.
And so with that, as I mentioned previously, we’ve had some some challenges with the study that are related to these being research plots and the challenges of shared equipment related to that and timing of everything. So timing in this relay system, particularly for herbicides is important. And that post post-harvest operation of the wheat in the relay system, it’s pretty critical to get that post herbicide application on, but we have to wait for the wheat to be harvested before we can get that application out there.
So that relates to our time in August because we can see in some of those relay plots, the the weed – the weed escapes as a result of us not being as timely as we would like to in these research plots anyway to get herbicides on. So other approaches we could have taken with the research was if we would have had smaller plots we could have used a sickle bar to cut the wheat and then maybe hand harvested the wheat but our plots are quite large – 40 by 40 feet – so that wasn’t really viable option for us um and we don’t have a 40-foot sickle bar so totally out of the question but because we were using a combine, trying to simulate that at least on a small scale. We were waiting for the equipment to become available, so we weren’t able to be as timely as we would like.
But we are continuing the sample as I mentioned earlier for for insects. We had one more sampling time of of different sample types and we talked about that before; sticky cards, vacuum samples, pitfall samples, we give those another opportunity for catch in August. And now we’re basically watching the beans turn yellow, so senescence – maturity of the beans seems to be a little earlier this year, and we can see that also in commercial fields in the area. Some of the beans that got in a little earlier, particularly around the hay springs area in Nebraska are already cutting and so our research plots are following suit. They’re turning yellow and it seems like the dry beans that are in the relay treatments – uh i think we observed this last year as well – are a little bit later in the maturity timing relative to the bean only.
So if you’re out looking at our plots, you’d see the bean only plots would be pretty yellow and the pods are starting to dry down, in our relay study you might even still find some flowers out there. So quite a bit of delay in the timing, and that’s related to shade and some other factors that will be one of the many things that we’ll have to tease out and work around because delayed maturity in beans is not a desirable trait to have in a cropping system, particularly for dry beans. You ideally want to get them harvested as early as you can, but just part of the research and why we’re looking at those things.
3:54 E: And Nevin, how about yours?
Nevin: Well, August is kind of – at least for dry edible bean research and weed science – August is probably our slow month. Which is, which is nice because it’s going to get real busy real quick.
um So all of our treatments have been put out now, we’re kind of slowing down on our assessments as well. And so we’re just really maintaining plots right now and just sort of making observations. So a couple things that are happening: the dried beans are starting to turn, so uh this time of year as we get close to harvest, they start to get yellow and it’s it’s actually pretty interesting. If you’ve got a field where you’re not having any sort of pest pressure or irregular watering or anything like that or everything’s uh pretty uniform as far as your inputs go, you can you can start to pick out differences in um soil uh texture because you’re gonna see certain parts of the field which maybe have a different uh coarser texture, more sandy, not as much water holding capacity, potentially those are gonna start turning yellow a little bit quicker and so we’re starting to see that. We’re starting to see these patterns in the field where some parts of the field are turning yellow, some parts aren’t but those do actually occasionally line up with with weed control treatments as well.
So we had a couple, we had one experiment this year where we were applying a bunch of different soybean herbicides that are not labeled in dry edible bean, but we’re trying to see if there’s potential to expand a soybean label and a soybean herbicide into dry edible beans. And we’re seeing some delayed maturity from some of those treatments now that delayed maturity likely is not going to result in the yield impact but we’re going to find out but some of the plots that are now quite yellow, right next to it, they’re they’re still in the midst of flowering. And so there’s, there’s pretty noticeable differences between some treatments and so that’s sort of, just what we’re seeing now, um we’re making notes of that,. But that’s going to get teased out when we go for for yield so we’ll know what the moisture content is of those beans and that’s going to give us a comparison of of what the maturity is at that time of the year.
5:54 E: And Bob, how about you?
Bob: Well, there hasn’t been a lot of disease from any anywhere in our in our plots. We did find a few lesions um periodically, but not enough to to uh need a application of the fungicides for for a grower.
But because of the studies that we are doing, we’re trying, we will go ahead and spray; either if it’s not this afternoon, then we’re going to spray tomorrow just to test the treatments that we said we were going to use. And then um just see what happens, even though the disease has not been um has been formed in our plots very readily. And but and I still don’t understand why, but it has not done that. But it is it – but it is present, I guess. and the spore catcher thing that we were trying to use – the spornado – has never told us that has – never detected any spores. So that would be with the disease triangle, that would be one of those uh points that were taken off. Which is then what we want to do to, to to manage that and they have not been conducive for the the disease to occur to a great extent. Although we have found a few here and there.
7:04 E: Well folks, there you have it. Today we talked to Jeff, Nevin, and Bob about where their research projects are at and what’s been going on in their fields over the month of August.
Stay tuned as we continue to delve into the science and education behind farming in plant pathology, entomology, and weed science. Follow us on Twitter @TheFarmSciEd and visit our website at farmsci-ed.com for transcripts and more updates. Have a good one!