Selecting The Right Seed for Your Operation
Stuart Carlson, Northern Product Agronomist
December 9, 2020
Choosing the right hybrid is one of the most important management decisions that you will make, and you get to do it every year. Sometimes hybrid selection is done in a haphazard way with not much planning involved. You may ask your Hoegemeyer representative “what is your best hybrid” and forget to consider how it needs to be managed or where it should be placed. I hope to guide you through some thoughts on how to make your hybrid decisions for next year.
- Yield Goal: Yield is the number one item that we need to consider when looking at a group of hybrids. If you don’t try to maximize your yield, you will miss out on income and profit. Our knowledgeable Hoegemeyer reps (dealers, district sales managers and agronomists) can help steer you to the products that perform the best in your area. You can look at the many test plots in your area on the Hoegemeyer website. I look for consistency when looking at plots. I tend to look at products that are at least 5% above the plot average or not anymore then 10% less of the highest yielding product. Looking through test plots will also give you some sort of guidance when determining your yield goals per field.
- Maturity Ranges: I will group these products into maturity ranges. I will group these hybrids into three categories, “Early” season group, “Medium” season group, and a group that I will call “Late” season. I like to diversify these groups with 25% of the acres going into the “Early” season, 50% of the acres going into the “Medium” season and 25% of the acres going into the “Late” season group. I will also have a total maturity range of 8-10 days. Having a balanced maturity grouping will help spread out weather risk especially pollination. Planting several hybrid maturities will also help speed up and manage harvest timings.
- THE RIGHT SEED For The Farm: What works best for me is to write down (and save for future years), strengths and weaknesses of each field. This exercise really helps me focus on which hybrid or hybrids will best fit that field.
- Choose Your Team: The Hoegemeyer team is here to help you make good placement decisions on your farm. The team also has the ability to document that ever important product placement, so you have it when its time to plant by using Corteva Fields.
Follow these four steps to make the right choice and get the right seed for your farm.
