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Agronomist: heat could accelerate corn, soybean maturity

A regional agronomy manager with Beck’s Hybrids says a hot start to September will accelerate crop maturity across parts of the Corn Belt.

Scott Dickey tells Brownfield “some of the later planted corn fields might struggle just a little more with finishing, seeing test weights dropped a little bit of smaller grain,” he says. “I was in the field this morning actually walking and it was just ahead of black layer. So fields like that, you know, the impact might be minimized since we’re pretty well complete with grain fill.”

He says the soybeans will be impacted more by triple digit temps.

“The later planted beans, they’re going to take this a little rough. We have some beans though that were planted in March and April. They’re approaching that R6 stage, if not a little further in some cases with earlier varieties. And again, with that early plant and nice development, we should see the impact the more minimal.”

He says corn harvest is underway in western Missouri.

“As we move into further east and north into the state of Missouri, we expect the corn to look pretty good.”

Dickey says corn harvest is wrapping up in southeast Kansas.

“We do have pretty decent yields in that geography. I’m not going to call them record yields, but they’ve been pretty good with the conditions we had. Northeast Kansas looks fairly good too,” he says. “Western Kansas, on the other hand, has been very dry. A lot of the dryland corn has died. There won’t be a harvest for dry land corn out there.”

He says the corn in western Nebraska is similar to the tough crop in western Kansas, but there’s excitement about the yield potential in eastern Nebraska.

Dickey says southern rust and tar spot confirmations have increased in Nebraska, but the diseases haven’t had a widespread impact in Kansas and Missouri.