Managing Corn, Beans in Increasing Drought Conditions

The US Drought Monitor continues to expand with forecasts calling for ongoing dry conditions across much of the country. Beck’s Hybrids, seed agronomy education lead. Matt Montgomery on managing drought conditions and drought scores,

“Planning early kind of matters for corn and beans. It helps us out on both those fronts. And then let's look at drought scores. Then let's look at placement product. You know, if we had pretty decent drought scores on a hybrid, that's a good kind of hedge against some of those droughty conditions that you're talking about. If we look at a variety, we want to make sure that variety is maybe a little bit more broad placement variety on those tougher acres. I don't want to accidentally take that variety that's built for moderate to high productivity ground and put it on the light stuff. Those are little ways that we can mitigate some of that moisture stress that we might be running into.”

Montgomery has insight on diseases in corn and dry beans and what to watch for as the upcoming crop season approaches.

“There's been kind of this lingering question about, what do we think we're going to see, disease-wise, fully, or disease-wise in corn in the season ahead? And boy, that's the big question, I think. Under that is this question about, will southern rust make an appearance again? And we really can't predict that one out. What I can probably say is more years than not, gray leaf spot is going to be our dominant disease.”

Matt Montgomery with Beck’s Hybrids.