Insights meeting showcases in-field results

PONTIAC, Ill. — Research-based information to help farmers capitalize on in-season decisions highlighted the recent Beck’s Hybrids Practical Farm Research Insights meeting.

Chad Kalaher, Beck’s Hybrids field agronomist, presented the results of the 2022 PFR trials. Here are some of the topics he covered.

On Nitrogen Systems

The corn crop starts to take up the most amount of nitrogen per day at the V6 to V8 stage. That’s when it’s eating the most nitrogen, whether is be ammonium or nitrate, until the VT/R1 stage.

Keep in mind some forms of nitrogen we put out there takes time to degrade into ammonium and nitrate forms.

For quite a while, we’ve established that a PFR Proven practice was putting 30 pounds of nitrogen with the planter and then coming back at V3 and side-dressing 160 pounds.

We’ve switched that up a little bit in terms of how we look at it now and how we set up our study because we found that putting 60 units of nitrogen with a planter followed by 130 pounds side-dress was better than doing 30 pounds on the planter and 160 pounds side-dress whenever we went to 2x2x2.

So, it’s two inches to the side of the seed, two inches below the seed on both sides of the row instead of one side of the row.

The control plots in the trials at multiple locations in 2022 had 60 units of nitrogen as UAN in the 2x2x2 placement, followed by 130 units of nitrogen as UAN at V3. There wasn’t much nitrogen loss in 2022, and the control plots had the best return on investment in 2022.

We need to get away from single applications of nitrogen. We’ve been talking about this for years and I think more and more operations are going to split applications of nitrogen.

There are probably some that still have just one application, but the risk is higher than with someone who is splitting their applications to two or maybe even three.

On Fungicides

Xyway LFR fungicide is a Group 3 triazole, one of the oldest classes of herbicides that we use in crop production. This is a liquid fungicide meant to be applied in-furrow. It can be mixed with most liquid fertilizer.

Xyway LFR fungicide was first announced to us by Beck’s as an agronomy group about three years ago. The company representative said this is a product that can be applied at planting and get good mobility of the product in-plant during the growing season and has good activity against northern corn leaf blight and also gray leaf spot.

We’ve never seen that before where a fungicide applied at planting that can be there at a high level of concentration in the middle of the plant and control northern corn leaf blight and gray leaf spot.

Flutriafol, the active ingredient in Xyway LFR fungicide, is rapidly taken up and translocated within the plant, providing systemic and long-lasting residual protection.

The ability of flutriafol to move from the soil upward through the plant for the duration of the growing season has not been demonstrated by any other fungicide active ingredient. We had to test it and see how it works.

The rate ranges from 7.6 ounces to 15.2 ounces, and 10 to 10.5 ounces is most commonly used if you’re going after suppression of northern corn leaf blight and gray leaf spot.

If you’re going after fusarium crown rot which is prevalent in most of the area I cover from Paris, Illinois, to DeKalb, Illinois, unless you farm extremely well-drained soils and you never have saturated soil conditions, you could probably benefit from this fungicide.

The higher rate can be used to protect against fusarium crown rot and also can control stalk rot and physoderma brown spot.

I’m going to hone in on crown rot because that’s been most notable for us and I think this is something that we deal with in fields and we may not even realize it.

Field trials in 2022 found an application of 10.5 ounces of Xyway LFR 2x2x2 applied gave a 10.6 bushel per acre advantage over the control plot.

The higher rate of 15.2-ounce rate of Xyway LFR 2x2x2 to control crown rot had an 11 bushel advantage over the control plot.

Seven ounces of Veltyma fungicide applied at R1 gave us a 16-bushel advantage. This data tells us we have a bigger yield response from the fungicide at R1.

The plot that had 10.5 ounces of Xyway LFR 2x2x2 applied at planting plus 7 ounces of Veltyma applied at R1 had a 21.6 bushel per acre advantage.

We didn’t see a big response going from 10.5 to 15. 2 ounces of Xyway LFR 2x2x2, but we did see an active effect when we put it together with Veltyma.

So, we’re protecting that plant early on and all the way through the growing season up until tassel time.

There was a big difference between the 2021 and 2022 trials, with 11 cents per acre loss in 2021 using 15. 2 ounces of Xyway LFR, and a $45.06 per acre return on investment in 2022 with the same application.

The biggest factor in our results was in 2021 most of those studies were in fields with crop rotations of corn after soybeans.

Most of the 2022 locations were corn after corn. We’re going to see a lot more fusarium inoculums survive year after year in corn after corn.

I would predict that in our third year of testing in 2023 that Xyway LFR is going to be a PFR Proven product.

I think this product has a lot of validity to it. I think we’ll see good activity and also a positive return on investment long term.

We always recommend this product if you’re placing it in-furrow like it is labeled to be if you have something like a FurrowJet that has the capability of liquid in three streams.

We recommend not putting it in the center stream and just putting it through the wings for maximum seed safety. There are also other ways to apply this product to keep it off the seed and sprayed into the trench.