July 23, 2010

Successful soybean production starts with selecting the best seed for your field conditions and management practices. While you can’t affect the weather or many other environmental production factors, you can affect your success by selecting hybrid seeds for better protein quality, higher yield performance, and disease resistance.

The Variety Testing Program at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is working diligently with other university units, industry, and state and national crop associations to provide Nebraska producers with the information they need for selecting the right hybrids for the right production condition and objectives. In one of the efforts to meet this goal, the variety testing program has collaborated with the United Soybean Board to make sure Nebraska Data is included in the Soybean Quality Toolbox.

"This collaboration was also made possible by the generous support of the Nebraska Soybean Board for the quality analysis of soybean hybrids included in our variety testing program," said Teshomme Regassa, UNL crop variety extension educator. "The Soybean Quality Toolbox is very useful to producers in identifying the hybrids with good protein and oil levels. Protein and oil content are found to be affected by local conditions in addition to management," Regassa said.

The Toolbox, developed by the United Soybean Board, can help growers iIdentify the hybrid best suited to their specific location and production goal and make more informed decisions when selecting seed. In turn, this can help them grow a crop targeted to special markets for high or low protein and oil, irrespective of yield potential, Regassa said.

It includes soybean variety information from 11 universities (including some from our neighboring states of South Dakota and Iowa) and the Farmer’s Independent Research of Seed Technologies (F.I.R.S.T.). Information from many soybean variety trials covers several years, depending on the data source.

Regassa has provided variety trial results for 2007-2009 for several UNL testing sites across Nebraska.

"This is one of the collaborative programming efforts by the University extension, crop group and industry that resulted in making better information available to producers," Regassa said.

The Soybean Quality Toolbox includes unbiased data on yield, protein, and oil content and economic value information for more than 8,900 varieties from major soybean seed companies, according to information from the United Soybean Board. Growers can evaluate a variety’s quality and yield performance and compare it to other varieties within the same plot, across several plots in the same year, or across several years at the same location.  Trial results are available in data tables or can be graphed, according to the information you want to focus on, such as oil content or yield for a particular set of sites, yields, etc.

Using the Soybean Quality Toolbox

Step 1. To view variety quality information for the geographical area of interest, select the state, harvest year, and then a town. (This will provide data for the nearest variety trial location.)

Step 2: Select data filers for soybean seed type, company, variety, and maturity group.

Step 3. Indicate pricing.

Step 4. Select how you would like to view the information – as tabular data or as one of several types of graphs. You also can export data or select a specific variety as a “favorite” to make it easier to return and review updates.

The Soybean Quality Toolbox is funded by the United Soybean Board checkoff. The data from Nebraska used in the toolbox is funded by the Nebraska Soybean Board.

Lisa Jasa
CropWatch Editor