How to select better seed

As new corn hybrids and soybean varieties routinely shoulder older seeds out of the marketplace, selecting new seeds brings up multiple questions: What will work best in your growing conditions? How will your management style impact performance? Where do you find the most pertinent agronomic information about the newcomers?

For starters, Bryan Jorgensen, chief agronomist for Jorgensen Land & Cattle of Ideal, South Dakota, says: “The evolution of corn hybrids, for instance, is constantly changing. It’s worthwhile to look at the newer hybrids. In our own system, I just watch the newer hybrids to see whether or not they might outperform what we’re already using.”

Three farmers of differing scale and production goals shared their perspectives on selecting the new hybrids and varieties most likely to work best for their farms.

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Seed Selection 101: Traits and Information Sources

“I choose the hybrids that are the highest yielding, regardless of traits,” says Jorgensen, a corn and soybean grower who practices no-till and also grows diverse crops and cover crops on his family’s 12,000 acres. “I don’t put a lot of value on test plot data from other farms, especially if they are not local. I want to see the hybrids perform under my management and growing conditions. I want new seeds that will perform well in our environment and repeat that performance consistently year to year.”

Near East Troy, Wisconsin, no-till farmer and certified crop adviser Jim Stute, who grows corn, soybeans, and cover crops on 160 acres, also looks for high yield potential in corn hybrids, but he also looks for standability and disease resistance.

“In corn, I look for hybrids that have stalk strength,” he says. “That’s important to me because I use a custom harvester, and sometimes my corn harvest gets delayed. Having standability ensures that the corn will stay standing up late into the season.”

In soybeans, Stute looks for yield potential and resistance to both disease and lodging.

In sum, for both soybeans and corn, Stute looks for seeds that perform well “across a range of conditions.” Often, seed trials rate performance across traits and conditions by assigning the varieties a performance index. “It’s a way to take a bunch of numbers reflecting a lot of factors and get it down to just one number,” says Stute.

As far as genetic traits, he selects a hybrid with a drought-tolerant biotechnology trait. “Weather variability has gotten crazy,” he says. “We’ve had drought-like conditions for each of the last three years. I planted two hybrids in 2020. One had the drought-tolerant genetic trait, and the other did not. By comparison, the yield was significantly less in the hybrid without the drought-tolerant trait.”

Beyond yield potential, non-GMO corn and soybean grower Grant Breitkreutz, Redwood Falls, Minnesota, looks for flex-ear corn hybrids.

Breitkreutz, who no-tills and also grows small grains and cover crops on 950 acres, says: “We find that corn with flexible ears lets us plant the corn at a lower plant population. That gives our interseeded cover crop a little more sunlight. If we get plenty of moisture, the corn ears grow large. But if we get drought, the ears will be smaller.”

In soybeans, Breitkreutz selects for yield and also for bushiness. “In case we have hail or poor plant emergence, the bushiness makes up for a reduced stand,” he says. “The plants canopy quickly, and we get better weed control.”

For initial information about new hybrids and varieties, Jorgensen checks with dealers. “The local dealer has information about a company’s regional test plots addressing the needs of my area,” he says.

Stute looks at results of regional university trials. He also gets trial data from his independent seed supplier. “Both sets of data show performance results from testing in my neighborhood,” he says.

Breitkreutz gets information about new corn hybrids from a dealer supplying non-GMO seeds in his region. “Most of the hybrids work in our soil, plus the seed is grown in our area,” he says. “We get soybean varieties from the companies we contract with for the food-grade market.” 

Seed Selection 201: On-Farm Testing

After selecting new seeds, Jorgensen grows them first on a limited scale, comparing their performance with that of hybrids and varieties that have proven to work well under his conditions. For side-by-side comparisons of corn, he fills half the planter with a new hybrid and the other half with a hybrid proven to work on his farm. “The results give us a sense of how that new hybrid might perform across the farm,” he says.

To test new varieties of soybeans, he plants half a quarter of land to the new variety and the other half to a proven variety.

“While harvesting, we compare varieties by considering the consistency of the new variety across multiple fields,” says Jorgensen. “The new variety might outyield the older variety by just 2 bushels per acre, but that’s significant if it does it across a range of fields. And sometimes we’ll see as much as a 10- to 15-bushel-per-acre yield boost occurring consistently across fields.”

Like Jorgensen, Breitkreutz experiments with new hybrids by first growing them on a small scale. “In the main, we have found new hybrids to yield well,” he says. “But once in a while, we find one that doesn’t respond well to our farming practices. Because we’re so focused on soil health, we reduce fertilizers as much as possible and don’t use insecticide or fungicide because we don’t want to hurt the soil biology. We want new hybrids to have the resilience to interact with the biology in the soil so that we can continue to be less dependent on synthetic inputs.”

Beyond doing his own on-farm testing, Jorgensen indirectly broadens his research of new hybrids and varieties by opening his farm to seed companies looking for test-plot sites. He plants and manages the plots for the company.

“It takes a lot of time, but the effort is worth it,” he says. “We can learn so much about how new varieties are going to perform in our environment.”

Seed Selection 301: Building a Soil Health System

Building soil health may at first glance seem unrelated to selecting seed, but it indeed plays center stage. The soil health Jorgensen has built over time on his farm is key to his ability to focus almost solely on yield potential, disregarding other traits, including disease resistance.

“By practicing the five soil health principles, we try to set up the soil system so that a lot of the ebbs and flows are removed from the environment,” he says. “Healthy soil is more resilient and less reactive to drought, for instance.” Building soil organic matter and soil biology has improved water infiltration and increased plant health.

Breitkreutz credits similar processes at work on their farm, eliminating disease and pest problems. As a result, they have reduced seed costs and receive price premiums for non-GMO crops.

Jorgensen sums up the key role soil health plays in selecting seed varieties: “Because we have very little disease and insect pests, I can focus on yield potential of a new hybrid or variety and its ability to perform in our environment,” he says.

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