August 24, 2011

Tom Dorn, Extension Educator in Lancaster County, with a Potential Yield Survey:  Dryland corn is in hard dough to dent stage. Nearly all corn fields are showing nitrogen deficiency symptoms with firing on leaves up to or above the ear. This is likely due to nitrogen leaching and denitrification that occurred when the soil was saturated in the spring.

All fields have grey leaf spot lesions, but I doubt the grey leaf spot will result in significant yield loss at this late crop stage. Ears taken at random from three northern Lancaster County fields had an average 498 kernels per ear. Assuming 30,000 ears per acre, those fields would produce an average of 14,940,000 kernels per acre. Given the lack of nitrogen, I am assuming 95,000 kernels per bushel, which would suggest an estimated yield of 157 bu /ac.

Soybean plants pulled from three northern Lancaster County fields averaged 37.4 pods per plant with 2.7 developing beans per pod for 101 beans per plant. Assuming 135,000 plants per acre at harvest time, there would be 13,632,300 beans per acre. Assuming 3,000 beans per pound, there would be 4,544 lb of beans per acre. At 60 lb per bushel the yield potential is 75.7 bu/ac if we get some additional rain to fill the beans. (8/23/11)