K-State Ag Today: How to ensure accuracy for soybean analysis
Story by Jeff Wichman
12:41 p.m. Wednesday, July 23, 2008
To help efficiently broker the deal between available soil nutrients and soybean plant nutrition, producers can conduct a plant analysis.
Dave Mengel, a professor in the Department of Agronomy at Kansas State University, says an accurate analysis depends on sampling the right parts of the plant, at exactly the right time.
"As the individual seed begins to develop, there's a large amount of movement of potassium and phosphorous and other nutrients, into an oil seed like soybeans. So it's really critical that we get these samples taken before the seed begins to develop," Mengel said.
To test, choose the third set of leaves down. Pop off the trifioliate, throw away the stem and send the three leaflets as a group into the laboratory.
"And we would like to have, oh, about 30 to 40 sets of these leaflets, to be able to have a good sample to use in the laboratory," Mengel said.
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