2003 Research
invests $112,567, funds 13 projects for FY03
Thirteen checkoff grants for soybean research totaling $112,567 have been
approved for 2003/2004 by the Maryland Soybean Board, the all-farmer agency
which administers the national soybean checkoff program in the state.
The grant proposals had previously been reviewed and approved by the
board's research committee and were given full board authority at a meeting
in Easton on March 19. Here's a summary.
* $17,800 to Dr. Frank Coale, University of Maryland Extension soil
specialist, to explore the use of poultry litter on soybeans. He will
evaluate the yield of full-season beans on three separate soil types after
applications of litter at the phosphorous removal rate - 1 ton per acre -
and the corn nitrogen removal rate - 3.5 tons per acre. He will also look
at the post-harvest nitrogen leaching potential of each of the soils
cropped to soybeans with and without poultry litter applications.
* $20,653 to Dr. Stephen B. Prince of the University of Maryland's
Department of Geography, to carry into a second year a project involving
the use of airplanes and remotely sensed and multispectral photographic
imagery to detect stress and diseases in soybeans. Although, from the air
in 2002 over the USDA research farm at Beltsville,, "only the soybeans were
green ... everything else died" , Prince reported that " it has been
established that the aircraft sensor system is able to provide suitable
data, can deliver data within a few hours of acquisition and that costs are
sufficiently low to test the usefulness of regular image acquisition in a
field trial in commercial soybean fields." Prince told the soybean board he
needed to "thrash out the economies of the program" and he hopes by the
summer of 2004 to have a "business plan" for farmers who might be
interested in using the technology.
* $3,500 to Dr. Robert Kratochvil, University of Maryland Extension field
crop specialist, to compare the performance of soybeans inoculated with
rhizobium and produced on fields that frequently produce non-inoculated
beans. Soybeans are capable to obtaining half of their nitrogen
requirements from nitrogen in the air if nitrogen-fixing rhizobium are in
the soil. Kratochvil contends that new research and new rhizobium
formulations suggest that rhizobium inoculation and frequency of
application guidelines need to be re-evaluated.
* $3,500, also to Dr. Kratochvil, to continue his evaluations of "edible"
soybean varieties and to compare the performance of the so-called edible
varieties under both organic and conventional production systems.
Kratochvil contends that green pod soybeans can be produced in Maryland; in
fact, in 2002, producers representing Chesapeake Fields Institute in
Chestertown contracted nearly 500 acres for Montague Farms in Center Cross,
Va., which produces natto type beans for export to Japan. Two natto type
varieties will be in the test this year.
* $11,818 to Dr. Ray Weil of the University of Maryland's Department of
Natural Resource Systems, for a second year of his effort to develop a
system of cover cropping that would alleviate the root-stunting effects of
subsoil compaction. He would do this by planting tap-rooted crops which
could penetrate the compacted subsoil, hopefully to provide channels for
the roots of the following soybean crop. In the 2002 drought, however, the
cover crops - forage radish plus rye for example - were not able to
penetrate the compaction as they would in a normal winter; however, Weil
and his research team were able to "obtain several images that prove our
theory that soybean roots can use the channels made by the cover crops."
Weil told the checkoff board that the wet winter of 2002-2003 "will open up
the root zone" and certainly provide more substantial data in the coming
growing season.
* $6,000 to Carol Holko, entomologist at the Maryland Department of
Agriculture, for the final year of a five-year project to breed, raise,
establish and evaluate a pupal parasite to control the corn earworm.
Parasites have been released since 1999 and for the first time, in 2002,
Holko reported, there was evidence the parasites were reproducing in the
field, as opposed to in the lab. "Energized by this encouraging
development," she said, "we would like to .... conduct this last year of
releases accompanied by intensive surveying to give this project a final
boost toward success."
* $16,000 to Dr. William Kenworthy, University of Maryland soybean breeder
and specialist, to continue to participate in a multi-state, USB-directed
search for low-fat, high protein soybean genotypes. Researchers also are
looking for a soybean with low phytic acid which would increase its
livestock and poultry feeding efficiency and reduce excretion of
phosphorous in the manure. The program has been successful, Kenworthy
reported, "in developing lines with lower palmitic acid and lower linolenic
acid. We are beginning regional yield trials with these traits and are
evaluating lines for potential release."
* $15,200, also to Dr. Kenworthy, to conduct in 2003 the annual state
soybean variety trials and, in conjunction with those trials, to help
support his continuing search for varieties resistant to the cyst nematode.
* $10,500 to Dr. Ron Ritter, University of Maryland weed control
specialist, the total of $3,500 grants for each of three projects entitled:
Management of hard-to-control broadleaf weeds in soybeans, the use of
genetically engineered soybeans for weed control, and management of
glyphosate-resistant weeds in full-season no-till soybeans.
* $2,696 to Jim Lewis, Caroline County Extension ag agent, to explore the
"optimum population for no-till drilled full-season Roundup Ready soybeans
on Coastal Plain soils." Lewis believes that with the new style drills,
which offer more accurate seed count and seed spacing, farmers may be able
to plant to a lower population and save up to $25 an acre on their seed
costs.
* $5,500, also to Lewis, to study the possibility of maximizing yields of
full-season irrigated soybeans with a shot of nitrogen at the plant's
"reproduction stage" and with a late-season fungicide application. Lewis
believes that these treatments will help "keep leaves and plants healthy to
ensure complete pod fill and bean enlargement.