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Why do early planted soybeans tend to yield more & flower before the summer solstice??
This was a hot question yesterday for some reason... probably due to growers looking at the forecast & thinking they may not get any planting done until late April or early May.
Simple answer: The sooner they start flowering, the longer they are in the reproductive stage. Chart below shows April 15th planted soybeans spend 52 days in reproduction vs 37 days for May 11th plant date. A plant can only make so much yield per day. The more days it is in reproductive stages, the more yield potential it can create.
A few reasons:
1) Indeterminant soybeans are actually long night plants which require a certain night length to trigger reproduction.
2) Modern genetics in the same "maturity" group tend to flower "sooner" than varieties of the past.
3) Soybeans will start reproduction at certain physiological stages, I see typically V3-V4.
4) Warm weather accelerating growth stages also leads to early flowering.
Planting delays doesn't mean we can't have strong soybean yields, it just means there is less room for other stresses during the growing season to achieve high yields.
Check out this link from WI.
ipcm.wisc.edu/blog/2018/06/t…
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