Indiana planting pace in 2023 was one of the fastest on record, which lined up with drought years as well as yield-breaking years. For most of our fields, soybean development in the month of June was summarized in one word – stagnant. Well, at least the aboveground growth seemed to stall out with the dry conditions. Fortunately, these soybeans were rooting down deep rather than expending energy into aboveground growth. If we have our choice of dry June or dry August, we will choose a dry June every time (assuming the roots have some access to moisture). The combination of timely planted soybean with good stand establishment and a dry June sets us up for a nice compact plant. We would rather have a compact plant that has good trifoliate node development and reproductive branches so the water use and photosynthetic efficiencies are optimized during pod development (July-August) and seed[Read More…]