Producers in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi may see record soybean yields across the region in 2018, said LSU AgCenter associate vice president and plant science program leader Rogers Leonard at the 62nd annual Tri-State Soybean Forum.
The region produces over seven million acres of soybeans and accounts for more than just “a drop in the bucket” as the commodity value and technologies available to increase profits continue to improve each year, Leonard said.
The tri-state meeting was held at the Thomas Jason Lingo Community Center in Oak Grove Jan. 5 and drew more than 125 producers and industry representatives. Meeting topics included soil fertility, variety resistance, soil and insect pathogens, and an economic outlook.
The Louisiana Soybean and Feed Grains Promotion Board and numerous industry and business donors sponsored the annual meeting, which rotates among Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi each year.
AgCenter county agent R.L. Frazier, who coordinated the event, said the forum brings researchers and specialists from the cooperating universities together to provide the latest research updates and recommendations affecting soybean production and practices.
University of Arkansas plant pathologist Terry Spurlock provided the latest information on tap root decline, a newly described disease that has become more prevalent since 2014, most notably in Mississippi and Louisiana.
Initially misidentified as black root rot, tap root decline is caused by a fungus.
“We don’t know yet if it is producing a toxin like sudden death syndrome or if it is a nutritional response or combination of the two, but we do know it is not a seed-borne disease,” Spurlock said.
Tap root decline behaves like a soil-borne disease and has caused some substantial yield losses since 2015, he said.
Growers may get some help from Mother Nature in controlling the redbanded stink bug, considered the most damaging stink bug in soybeans, said LSU AgCenter research entomologist Jeff Davis.
“For lethal exposure, all we need is nine hours at 23 degrees Fahrenheit to kill 90 percent of the population, and we have had that,” Davis said.
Because no soybean varieties are immune to stink bugs, Davis recommends planting less-susceptible varieties, scouting fields early and often until harvest, and using multiple insecticide applications as populations reach threshold to maintain stink bug control.
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