Third-party trials offer seed selection guide

URBANA, Ill. — A free service for farmers that began 89 years ago by the University of Illinois has released the 2023 corn and soybean trial data.

Results of the Illinois Variety Trails will be published in the Dec. 15 issue of Illinois AgriNews and offer unbiased, third-party performance evaluations from plots across the state.

The data includes corn and soybean yields for each site, as well as soybean protein and oil contents, and provide a guide for seed selection in various geographies.

Crop performance tests are conducted annually to provide farmers, Extension personnel and private seed companies with agronomic information on hybrids and varieties of the major Illinois field crops.

The trials are professionally managed and conducted in a research-based manner to minimize variability and ensure the integrity of the results.

“We had about 150 soybean varieties and 190 corn hybrids in this year’s trials. That was down some from last year,” said Darin Joos, U of I research agronomist.

Yields

Corn yields were better than expected considering the growing conditions that included an extended drought.

“The Monmouth site had a 298-bushels-per-acre average, including 343 bushels per acre in one of the corn trials. DeKalb averaged 267 across all hybrids,” Joos said.

There were no major disease or pest issues in the corn trials. Joos added he did see some tar spot, but doesn’t believe it impacted yield too much.

“The soybeans were probably more affected by the drought than anything else, especially in the earlier maturities. There was probably a bigger disparity between early and late maturity trials than I’ve ever seen. The early maturities were in some cases as much as an average of 10 bushels lower,” Joos noted.

Across all soybean maturities, the DeKalb trials averaged 82.9 bushels per acre, the highest average of all Illinois trials, followed by 77.1 at the Urbana site. There were no reports of disease or pest pressure at the soybean trial sites.

Planting was a couple of weeks later than usual, and harvest was a bit later, too, for both corn and soybeans.

“I think probably the biggest issue we had is we weren’t able to harvest both crops in Region 4, our southern Illinois region, because of damage to the plots due to human error. So, we don’t have any data from Region 4 (for Belleville and St. Peter) for 2023,” Joos added.

Trial Changes

The 2023 crop year featured program changes. The number of locations were decreased from 12 to eight, and regions were realigned between the corn and soybean trials.

“Those decisions were made around a survey we sent out where we floated that idea of going from 12 to eight and people seemed to be good with that,” Joos said.

The trials still cover most of the state’s diverse geographies.

“The only region we dropped was Region 5, the most southern region of the state — Elkville and Harrisburg,” Joos noted.

“Basically, it came down to we were kind of running with low staff numbers and we wanted to keep the program going because there was interest. This seemed like the best way to manage it.”

In addition, there has also been a drop in seed company entries that fund the trials.

The farmer survey also revealed many farmers wanted to keep the variety trials as they consider them as a good source of unbiased, third-party data to help their decision-making.

Soybean trials were conducted on farms in Freeport, DeKalb, Monmouth, Goodfield, Perry, Urbana, Belleville and St. Peter.

Corn trials were conducted in Freeport, DeKalb, Monmouth, Goodfield, Urbana, Belleville and St. Peter.

Funding

The Illinois Variety Trials are financially supported primarily by two sources. Seed companies submit varieties for evaluation, paying a fee to help supplement the costs of the program.

The Illinois Soybean Association has also designated checkoff dollars to support the trials so that farmers continue reaping the value of unbiased variety data.

Recent funding has helped purchase combine technology that can record protein and oil content metrics automatically, streamlining the data collection process so varietal performance results are quickly available.