Picking Your Variety

Correlate the variety with your local growing season

Canadians measure a soybean season according to Corn Heat Units (CHU’s). In the USA they use a Relative Maturity System. The US rating system differs as they account for the fact that soybeans are both daylight & heat sensitive. Some varieties are more light sensitive than others. In order to correlate between the US & CDN systems, we use the following as a guideline, from what we’ve researched.

ALL OF OUR VARIETIES ARE IN THE 0.00 CATEGORY

HIGHLY SENSITIVE TO DAYLIGHT

What Heat Unit area are you in? Download this pdf document with all 3 provinces on it.

Investigate crop rotation

As a part of your crop rotation soybeans will introduce small amounts of nitrogen into the soil thus a small reduction in fertilizer costs. Overall soybeans are an excellent rotational crop but can carry some diseases.

Soybean diseases, especially root rot, build up when soybeans are in close rotation. Lengthening rotations to 3 or 4 years between soybean crops is recommended.

Dry beans, canola, sunflowers, flax, peas, lentils, alfalfa and buckwheat carry the Sclerotinia fungus. As well do broadleaf weeds. Soybeans are somewhat susceptible to sclerotinia in years with high moisture and high seeding rates.

Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) can be devastating to a soybean crop. In your rotation use SCN non-host crops such as corn, alfalfa, potatoes, wheat, barley and sunflowers. Peas and beans are hosts of SCN. Weed control is important because SCN will reproduce on a wide variety of weeds. However at the moment there are no reported cases of SCN in Manitoba.

Fusarium root rot can be carried in dry beans. If this is an issue, avoid dry beans in your rotation.

Roundup Ready® vs. Conventional

What should you choose? What advantages does one have over the other?

Also, refer to the chart shown below to compare Herbicide costs when debating if one should go Roundup Ready® or Conventional.