By STEVE BINDER

Illinois Correspondent

BELLEVILLE, Ill. — Given that hundreds of growers were forced to replant because of soggy conditions during the late spring, herbicide drifting in early summer, and drought-like conditions later in the season, most soybean plots in Illinois did fairly well.

Farmer’s Independent Research and Seed Technologies (FIRST) program site manager Eric Beyers took it a step farther.

“I’d say overall that beans did phenomenal throughout the state,” Beyers said. “And, with the two plots we’re talking about today, with different conditions faced by both growers, they still produced more than respectable yields,” Beyers said.

The two FIRST plots aren’t side-by-side in southern Illinois, with one located in Belleville overseen by owner John Barttlebort and the other in DuQuoin owned by Don Polczynski, so they not have different soil types, but weather conditions varied significantly.

Polczynski was planning to put his beans into the ground in late May, but a surge of wet weather forced him to delay planting until June 3 at a rate of 140,000 seeds per acre. His stand at harvest netted about 110,600 per acre.

Barttlebort’s beans were planted on May 26 at the same seed rate as Polczynski’s plot, and his stand at harvest was better, at about 128,800 per acre. Barttlebort has an Ipava silty clay loam soil that drains moderately while Polczynski has Dana silty clay loam soil that doesn’t drain well. Both growers do not irrigate and both alternate between beans and corn from season to season.

Overall, the Belleville site produced a yield average of 61.8 bushels per acre, well above the site’s 15-year average yield of 54.9 bushels per acre. The DuQuoin site posted an average yield total of 48.8 bushels per acre, again ahead of its 15-year-average of 42.9 bushels.

“There are two different soil types with these plots; one is a lighter gray clay content while the other is a richer soil than what’s usually found in southern Illinois, which produced more seeds per acre,” Beyers said.

Beyers also noted that some varieties fared well on one plot but did not fare as well on the other. “Certainly some of the conditions we’ve talked about, like soil types, have something to do with the differences in performance of the same variety in different locations.”

In full season tests, Golden Harvest’s GH4307X was tops in DuQuoin, producing a yield average of 53.2 bushels per acre and a gross income return of $489 per acre; Dyna-Gro’s S43XS27 was second with a yield total of 52.8 and a gross income return of $482; and Stone’s 2RX4327-SR was third with a yield of 52.5 and an income return of $483.

The average moisture level for the crop was 11.8 percent.

Two varieties tied for the top spot in Belleville, with Pioneer’s P38A98X and FS HiSoy’s HS 42X50 both posting yields of 65.7 bushels per acre and an income return of $599 per acre; Great Heart’s GT-4231XS was third with a yield of 65.4 bushels per acre and a return of $595 per acre.

Average moisture for the beans was 17.2 percent.