‘Tale of two cities’ for corn, soybeans in central Illinois

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — Those young corn and soybean plants are stronger than they look.

“What I tell people is when corn and soybean plants are younger, they can take a considerable amount of abuse and still perform and produce respectable yields,” said Chris Kallal, DEKALB Asgrow technical agronomist for central Illinois.

Kallal said the condition of corn and soybean crops in his territory, along Interstate 72 from Decatur to Quincy, is “a tale of two cities.” That tale depends on planting dates, soil types and moisture.

“On the darker, heavier ground, where we got in and got planted early, that corn and those beans all look good,” Kallal said.

He said early planting dates allowed corn to get rooted and access moisture deeper into the soil profile. But on lighter ground or with crops that were planted later, it’s a different scenario.

“As you move into the lighter soils, the later planted crops, the no-till soils that just don’t warm up as fast, soils that don’t have quite the water-holding capacity, that corn and those soybeans look rougher. They are not coping with the drought nearly, as well,” Kallal said.

He said the lack of progress of those crops can be identified by vegetation.

“Their root development and vegetative growth has kind of stalled out because they are lacking more water and they can’t access water. They are just not getting the vegetative growth that we would like to see,” he said.

But even in the earlier planted crops or the crops on the darker, richer soils, Kallal said the soil moisture deficit is becoming critical.

“We are getting closer and closer to that critical stage where we could start having yield impacts very quickly and they could start adding up very quickly,” he said.

If there is one positive note, Kallal said the dry conditions and lack of humidity has stalled disease development in both corn and soybeans.

“From a disease perspective, there’s next to nothing. I was just in a cornfield and it was clean from top to bottom. I didn’t see a lesion of any disease on any leaf. We have not had the humidity or enough rainfall to drive any disease at this point,” he said.

But even with the lack of disease, Kallal said he is urging growers to stick with the plans they made at planting.

“What I have been telling growers is proceed with the plan, which was generally to do a VT time fungicide application. Let’s go forward with what we had planned,” he said.

Kallal added that while growers should stick with their crop plans, some details of those plans can be changed as crop conditions demand.

“Some fields may have been slated for a double application. We may not need that second application this year. By the time we get to the second application, we’ll know a lot more of what this environment is going to do,” he said.

Kallal said dry conditions earlier in the planting season have increased concerns about corn rootworm.

“It’s that time when we are going to start seeing adult beetles starting to emerge and starting to fly. Across the state, we had about near perfect conditions for hatch because what really matters on corn rootworm is the soil moisture level at the time of hatch,” he said.

“Obviously, we were on the drier side during that time, three to four weeks ago. Hatch would have been good, so there’s the chance we will see more corn rootworm this year than we have the last couple of years just because the environment was good at hatch time.”