A-Series soybeans expands in Enlist varieties

JOHNSTON, Iowa — Pioneer’s new A-Series Enlist E3 soybean variety offers will expand for the 2023 growing season.

After extensive testing and trials across geographies in 2021, Pioneer released 28 A-Series Enlist E3 varieties for this growing season with maturities ranging from Group 00 to Group 7.

“We have a lot of growers across the U.S. that have tried these and like what they see,” said Don Gehrls, Pioneer soybean marketing lead. “We will bring another class next year that kind of fills in some of the gaps in a few maturities where we might only have one variety this year.

“We expect the demand for 2023 to be very significant. For the Pioneer brand, the vast majority of the E3 soybeans we sell next year will already be available as A-Series. It won’t be a small launch next year as we ramp this up which is going to be really good for our teams and for farmers overall.

“In extensive testing and trials across geographies in 2021, A-Series Enlist E3 soybeans delivered a three-bushel per acre advantage over 4,300 comparisons against all competitors and all geographies across the U.S.”

Pioneer brand A-Series soybeans were initially offered in LibertyLink and Roundup Ready 2 Xtend and are now part of the Enlist E3 genetics.

“A-Series is our most elite genetics from the Pioneer germplasm library. We launched A-Series overall in other trait packages in 2017, and the response from farmers when they planted them the last five years as been overwhelming. It’s made Pioneer the No. 1 selling soybean brand in the U.S., and really it’s been because of consistent performance year after year,” Gehrls said.

“It’s not just top-end yield. What we hear from growers is when you think about the different seasons we’ve had since 2017 — we had drought, we had wet and we had everything in between — A-Series has performed for growers year after year.

“We took the genetics, we worked with our breeders to really focus on agronomics and that has come through and now we’re excited to bring that with the Enlist E3 trait.

“These are exclusive products for Pioneer. So, we’ve been seeing what’s happened in the E3 segment, a lot of genetics that are shared across the industry, really wanting to drive adoption of the trait. Now we have A-Series Enlist E3, you won’t find it anywhere else other than in a Pioneer bag. Growers have been asking for this by name.”

Acreage

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s recently estimated 88 million acres of soybeans were planted in the nation this year.

“Based on the latest research we have from growers about their intentions for the 2022 season, about half of them expected to plant Enlist E3 soybeans. That is a big number and there’s certainly a lot of momentum from where we were when we launched this just a few years ago,” Gehrls noted.

“Growers are telling us they’ve got a choice of traits. We’ve been offering a choice of traits and they’re choosing Enlist E3 traits in that system.

“They’re choosing it because they’ve seen the effectiveness of the herbicide program, they’ve seen the flexibility of it and they’ve seen how neighbor-friendly it can be. All of that is why they’ve been picking it to date. Yes, the varieties have performed well, but a lot of the choice has been made based on the system.”

Weed Control

The Enlist E3 trait offers farmers options with its tolerance to 2,4-D choline, glyphosate and glufosinate.

The Enlist weed control system provides a new standard for weed control that delivers on-target applications with enhanced flexibility.

Enlist herbicides feature near-zero volatility and reduced potential for physical drift, when applied according to label instructions, as well as a wide application window, no calendar cut-off dates or time-of-day restrictions, according to Pioneer.

Genetics

“With fresh challenges every season, farmers need the most consistent performance available,” Gehrls said.

“That doesn’t just mean racehorse yields, but also better agronomic performance in key areas like standability and defensive traits to help protect yield from soybean diseases such as white mold and sudden death syndrome.

“We have breeders across the country and they’re not just sitting in an office looking at a computer screen. We were out there with farmers the last several years asking them what they need, what we need to work on in their geography, whether it’s white mold in the north, standability, whatever it is — our breeders want to work on it.

“Then we have local, dedicated disease nurseries where we do multiple years of testing on these products. So, we make sure when we put a disease score on a soybean it’s true. It’s consistent with what they’ve seen in the past from Pioneer. I think our disease scoring stands up to any competitor out there. Growers have come to really trust the score.”