Seed selection can effectively solve a wide range of agronomic issues. Whether you’re dealing with disease, pests, drought, or even harvest efficiency, selecting the right corn and soybean products can improve crop performance and resilience, and reduce input costs.
“Seed selection is very important,” said Ryan Dunsbergen, Golden Harvest soybean product manager, stressing the need to match maturities and traits with local field conditions. Farmers must balance “offense and defense,” choosing high-yielding varieties while also ensuring strong resistance to diseases, pests, and soil variability, he said.
Choosing the right seed is about more than just picking a high-yielding variety, said Craig Hurley, Beck’s soybean lead. It requires careful attention to field history, recognizing past disease pressures, considering rotation patterns, evaluating soil types, and selecting genetics tailored to those conditions. “Field history is critical to make the right seed recommendation,” he said.
Weed Management
Grass and broadleaf weeds pose a challenge, requiring a delicate balance of active ingredients. When choosing a seed with weed management in mind, it’s important to think beyond herbicide tolerance. Be sure to also consider field history and weed tolerance.
“Think about what weeds are in the field that might be resistant to herbicide tolerance and how to manage or layer different herbicides over the course of the season,” said Dave Hoy, agronomy division manager with LG Seeds.
Certain corn hybrids may be sensitive to certain herbicides, so Hoy recommended double-checking that chosen hybrids work with your entire weed management plan.
Volunteer corn can be particularly tricky to manage in corn-on-corn productions, especially when the previous year’s harvest posed challenges.
“If you planted a Roundup Ready hybrid last year, planting something with glufosinate tolerance might be an option to clear up volunteer corn,” said Michael Plumblee, a corn and soybean Extension specialist at Clemson University. “If they’re both Roundup Ready, you’re not going to have many options after planting.”
When it comes to trait platforms in a corn-and-soybean rotation, Jon Olsen, a Pioneer field agronomist in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, recommends using the most advanced and flexible herbicide traits available. “We know that using multiple effective modes of action is the most effective way to control herbicide-resistant weeds,” he said.
In addition to chemistry, Olsen recommended considering soybean canopy width. “If you’re planting wider rows, sometimes, getting a bushier, more robust plant type to close the rows sooner will help keep weed pressure down a little earlier than a narrower type canopy,” he said.
Disease Management
Understanding a field’s disease history is a solid foundation for making seed decisions. “If it’s happened once, chances are it will happen again,” Hoy said. “Making sure hybrids have a very good disease package can mitigate risk if that disease does come to fruition.”
Hoy recommended working with seed company agronomists, as they have the best understanding of how hybrids react to disease.
Short crop rotations and significant residue can increase the risk of diseases such as northern corn leaf blight and gray leaf spot. In those conditions, choosing the right hybrid may decrease the need for a fungicide application.
In soybeans, diseases like iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC) and white mold are best managed with variety selection, said Golden Harvest’s Dunsbergen. “What happens in high-pH soils is that iron is not available to the plant,” he explained. “In these soils, you definitely want a variety that has a good IDC score.”
White mold can devastate soybeans when environ-mental conditions are right. For fields with a history of white mold, Olsen recommended tolerant soybean products. “Bushier plants with a thicker canopy will hold moisture in,” he said. “In severe white mold situations, select varieties with good white mold scores and a narrow canopy.”
While disease resistance is an important factor in seed selection choices, there’s always a trade-off, said Lance Tarochione, a technical agronomist for Asgrow Dekalb, covering western Illinois. “In reality, it only becomes a major factor if you have a particular disease,” he said. “We’re always thinking about it, always managing against it, but conditions may not favor disease development.”
Courtesy of Becks
Insect Management
Major advancements in hybrid traits have meant insect pressure is not a driving factor for most seed decisions. However, being aware of potential risks can help tweak management for optimum performance.
For areas prone to corn rootworm, especially in corn-on-corn rotations, it’s important to be proactive in managing this pest through seed selection, Tarochione said. “The new products with the RNAi technology have improved our efficacy and protection against rootworm,” he said. “If you have heavy rootworm pressure, that trait is a game-changer.”
According to Bayer, RNAi technology works differently than a soil-applied insecticide or Bt protein-based traits. While a Bt trait works in the corn rootworm’s midgut, the RNAi-based trait interferes with its ability to create a specific protein critical to survival. After rootworm ingestion, RNAi technology stops production of this essential protein, which kills the rootworm.
Choosing a hybrid with an aggressive root system can also help protect plants from threats below the soil surface. “Some hybrids grow straight down and are only built for yield,” said Hoy of LG Seeds. “Others have roots that really fan out at a 45° angle that anchor the plant down. When bugs come along and chew those roots up, they actively regrow or regenerate.”
Maturity
Spreading out maturities across a farm can ease harvest planning, but take care to avoid unnecessary risks. The ultimate goal should be flexibility while avoiding delays that require harvesting in less-than-ideal conditions. Consistency year-over-year can also allow for better fall planning.
While 112–120-day corn is typical in his area, Clemson’s Plumblee has noticed an increased interest in shorter maturities planted earlier. “These hybrids don’t seem to handle stressors quite as well as our more proven hybrid genetics,” he said. “If someone is interested in planting super-early, I definitely encourage them to proceed with caution.”
When considering maturity groups for soybeans, Olsen of Pioneer recommended planting full-season varieties first. “That’s how you will maximize yield, get the most nodes and flowering,” he said.
Soybeans can dry down quickly at harvest. Spread out maturities, so harvest can begin with the early-maturing varieties at the ideal moisture.
Continue to move to the full-season varieties.“You want to ensure you are harvesting at the optimum moisture for as many acres as you can,” Olsen said.
Meredith Operations Corp.
Environmental
While you may not be able to control the weather, the right seed choice can mitigate severe environmental risks. Droughts, floods, and high-wind events can significantly impact yields if chosen hybrids are not resilient in challenging conditions.
Use hybrid yield data and work with lo-cal experts to make the best decisions for your environment. In some cases, a shorter maturity may be beneficial.
To reduce the impacts of drought in soybeans, Olsen recommends spreading risk through maturity group selection. “If all your varieties are filling pods in August at the same time and we hit that drought stretch, they’re all going to suffer and lose yield,” he said. “Spreading that risk with different maturities and planting dates is the best way to mitigate that risk.”
Early Planting
Early planting helps maximize soybean yield, Beck’s Hurley said, noting, “Those planting early are seeing a return to the bottom line with increasing revenue on soybeans.”
Early planting increases the risk for cool, wet soils and sudden death syndrome (SDS) in some geographies, Hurley said. “I would look at varieties with a predisposition of tolerance for SDS, a good phytophthora package, and a good emergence package,” he said. “And also, adding a seed treatment to minimize SDS and other early-season pressures will be important.”
The desire to get into fields earlier in the season is not limited to soybean fields. An earlier planting date can help maximize the sunlight plants receive. In hotter climates, early-planting corn can optimize the timing of the plant’s growth cycle.
“For us, the value in planting early is trying to push our tassel date forward, so we don’t have 100°F temperatures at the time of pollination,” Clemson’s Plumblee said.
LG Seed’s Hoy recommends that farmers looking to push planting dates choose hybrids with strong emergence and early vigor ratings.
“Those two things are often considered the same thing, but they’re very different,” Hoy said. “Emergence is the ability of the seed to poke through the soil, get sunlight, and start the photosynthesis process. Early vigor is how fast and how aggressively the plant can grow after it reaches the soil line.”
Plants with aggressive growth early on are best suited to take advantage of the additional growing degree days early planting provides.
Double-Crop Soybeans
On the flip side of early planting are considerations or late-planted or double-crop soybeans. Heat and drought can be problematic, but warmer soils lend to faster emergence, said Johnathon Howe, Brevant retail sales agronomist in southwest Indiana. To get a jump on weeds, Howe recommended varieties that have good canopy widths and fast growth.
In southern Indiana, Howe has found earlier soybean products have been successful in double-crop situations. “In 2024, we saw that a 3.9 maturity group was winning a lot of our double-crop soybean plots,” he said. “It didn’t experience the hot and heavy drought we had at the very end of summer.”
Howe said following wheat, it is also important to select Sulfonylurea Tolerant Soybean (STS) varieties that can tolerate sulfonylurea herbicides commonly used in wheat.
Soybean Cyst Nematode
Soybean cyst nematode (SCN) is the crop’s billion-dollar pest.
For fields that have used PI 88788 sources for a while, Howe recommended adding a nematicide seed treatment and switching to Peking sources. “I think farmers will be surprised by the yield jump they get just by saving bushels that come from a new form of attack on SCN,” he said.
“We’ve been launching newer products that carry the Peking source of resistance,” Golden Harvest’s Dunsbergen said. “For 2026, we will offer eight varieties with Peking.”
Courtesy Provided
Special Hybrids
In the past few years, new hybrid technologies have emerged, offering new management styles. Short-stature corn and ear-flex hybrids are two notable examples. When evaluating new options, there are a few things to consider.
“Make sure to pair that hybrid with the field it is going into and your ability to plant and harvest it,” Hoy said. “Step back and think about what you would need to do around your whole operation to make that system work.”
Budget
As budgets tighten, outlining your priorities allows for better decisions on where to reduce spending. While yield will almost always be first priority, Plumblee suggests deciding where you have zero tolerance and where you can be flexible.
“I consider a lot of our weed issues to be zero tolerance,” he said. “But depending on when and where it’s planted, we can probably be more flexible with our Bt traits.”
The financial aspect of seed selection often comes down to return on investment rather than outright costs. In some cases, management changes, such as reducing seeding rates, or managing other inputs to match expectations, can have a greater impact on profitability.
“It really comes down to making the right choices per acre,” Hoy said. “You want to maximize how much grain you get to sell in the fall. I would really suggest dicing into these hybrids you’re selecting and asking a lot of questions.
The biggest challenge for seed companies and farmers, Tarochione said, is anticipating which germplasm is going to be best adapted to the year when we don’t know what next year’s environment is going to be. “Hindsight’s always 20/20,” he said. “At the end of the year, you’ll know what you should have planted.”
Follow the Yield Quest series for more information on how to boost your yield season after season.
