When Is the Best Time During the Soybean Growth Stages To Conduct Tissue Testing To Understand Nutrient Needs for Maximum Grain Yield?

Evaluating Leaf Nutrient Tissue Testing and Relation to Soybean Grain Yield

Because soybeans can remobilize nutrients from lower to newly developing nodes, more information is needed to understand which nutrients and in what quantities are made available to new nodes. This project uses tissue testing to gain these insights and help establish more accurate and timely in-season nutrient recommendations to maximize soybean yield.

WHY THIS RESEARCH IS IMPORTANT

  • Currently, in-season soybean tissue testing involves targeting the most-recently opened trifoliate. This may not accurately determine the plant’s nutrient needs to guide in-season nutrient application decisions. This is because lower nodes on a soybean plant start to remobilize nutrients to developing pods at the same time new nodes and leaves are still emerging at the top of the plant.
  • It is also unclear if different nutrients remobilize at the same rates.

HOW THIS RESEARCH BENEFITS THE FARMER

  • Knowledge gained will give farmers a more thorough understanding of how soybean plants accumulate and remobilize nutrients from their leaves. It can serve as a timeline of soybean nutrient uptake and remobilization that informs when, where and at what rate different nutrients cycle through the soybean growth stages.
  • Insights from this research will help farmers know when and where on the plants to take tissue samples to more accurately assess the nutritional needs of their soybean crop and design a nutrient management plan better aligned to the nutritional needs throughout the soybean growth stages.

RESEARCH TEAM

  • Dr. Connor Sible, Postdoctoral Research Associate, UIUC
  • Dr. Fred Below, Professor, UIUC
  • Juliann Seebauer, Principal Research Specialist, UIUC
  • Jared Fender, Senior Research Specialist, UIUC
  • Gabriela Frigo Fernandes, Master’s Student, UIUC

TRIAL LOCATIONS

  • Urbana

About the Lead Researchers

Dr. Connor Sible
Postdoctoral Research Associate
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
815-904-4391
sible2@illinios.edu

Dr. Fred Below
Professor
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
217-333-9745
fbelow@illinois.edu

Project Updates

No project updates found.

ARE YOU A FARMER OR ADVISOR?

If you’re a farmer or advisor, we invite you to take our Soybean Production Concerns Survey linked below to help guide future ISA research efforts. We also encourage you to contact us below with specific production challenge research ideas.

ARE YOU A RESEARCHER?

If you’re a researcher interested in working with ISA on a project, we encourage you to contact us with your ideas. The RFP will open in early March. Contact us below to be added to the mailing list for more information.