April 7, 2009
Winter Production Update: April 7, 2009
Argentina:
We have very few increases in Argentina this year, and that was a very lucky thing! Earl Barnaal visited Chacabuco in mid-March, and Dave Denby followed up with a visit at the end of March.
In general, the crop is very stressed and poor. Early beans planted early were essentially a failure in some cases. At best, yields were severely impacted by the drought. Later beans will be better, but still nothing to write home about.
For those with CS R00923 and CS R0720, we have basically scrapped the increases, with only a limited amount of seed to bring back. Your sales rep should have already communicated any allocation for these two lines. The CSR4792n will be better, but still nowhere near the 50-60 bushels/acre we have come to expect from this location. We will keep you posted on the final harvest numbers.
Chile:
This is the first year we have done large-scale production here, and I recently returned from my initial visit to this country.
The first thing that strikes you is the diversity of the agriculture. It reminds you of the Imperial Valley in California. I saw soybeans, corn, rice, tobacco, alfalfa, and sugar beets. The fruits and vegetable crops are amazing. Grapes (both table and wine) are everywhere, as are blueberries, avocados, lettuce, kiwi trees, artichokes, peaches, apples, cauliflower, cabbage, plums, lemons, olives, cherries, and squash.
The soybean crop, in general, was excellent. The growing areas are the valleys that lie between the Andes mountains to the East, and the coastal range to the West. This is basically a desert, and the entire area is flood-irrigated from reservoirs which capture the snow melt from the mountains.
A beautiful place to grow soybeans! (Click on photos to enlarge)
The soils range from very rocky and poor to very good. Most of the production is on rather marginal soil, but the irrigation and fertilization are key. Also, inoculant usage is a must. I noted several instances where the inoculant application was poor, and it resulted in very visible poor spots in the fields.
Yields:
In general, yields are much better than expected. There will be very few—if any—allocations that will need to be made due to poor yield.
Our original hope and expectations were to harvest about 30 bushels per acre. The vast majority of the fields I saw were much better than this, with 45 bu/a fairly routine. Early maturities that were already harvested were running from 25-35 bu/acre. Group 1’s were routinely going 45-50, as were the group 2’s. Every now and then you could find a poor field, with late planting, poor soils, poor irrigation—or a combination of all three—but these were clearly the exception.
So, we will have additional seed over and above our original expectations. Your PGI sales rep will be in touch with you soon to discuss additional availability!
CS 24R202N with big yield RY1609 being harvested
Quality:
Seed quality looked surprisingly good. I saw seed on fields up to 2.4 RM, and picked mature pods on varieties up to 3.1 RM, and seed quality and appearance were generally quite acceptable. A big advantage of Chile over Argentina is the total lack of phomopsis and storage molds. You just don’t get pod and stem blight in a desert!
There was an occasional field where another shot of water might have filled out the pods a bit better, but not many.
In another pleasant surprise, seed size was running fairly normal, perhaps 2600-3100 seeds per pound. I did see several fields where the pods and seed size looked very large; again, these were generally isolated and not common.
We will have actual germination scores and seed sizes for you once conditioning is finished, as the seed is being transported to the U.S.
There will be a few lines where we need to air-freight seed back to the US to meet all of our strip-test needs. From my initial observations, I would be very comfortable with the seed quality on these lines, and very comfortable using it for strip testing.
Example of how the seed will be packaged
Nice seed quality Modern cleaning equipment
Cleaning instructions Gravity table
Timing:
The crop is on the late side, but moving along very quickly. When the seed was sent from the U.S. to Chile last November, there was a strike underway, and we could not get our seed out of the ports. The first fields were planted in late November (around the 27th) and most planting finished up by about December 7 or so.
Because of this, the harvest feels later than normal.
Approaching harvest
Dale Aaberg in a beautiful field of CS 29R212N A field of CS 24R202N ready for harvest
However, two factors will help mitigate the late start. First of all, we will be transporting the seed on “Fruit Boats,” which are the faster-moving ships usually intended to transport the fresh fruit crop to the U.S. Secondly, there is widespread use of dessicants (paraquat) to help speed the harvest along. The dessicant has no affect on seed quality, but rather reduces green stems and allows for a more uniform field.
Dessicant (paraquat) application
In general, I would expect most (if not all) seed to arrive to your business by May 15. The majority of the seed will probably arrive between May 1st and May 10th. The first fields were harvested during the last week of March while I was there, and I would expect them to arrive in the U.S. around April 20th.
Once the seed is “on the water” we will plan to provide updates on the actual arrival times.
That’s all for now, additional updates will be posted as the shipping progresses!
A Chilean Corn Dog! CS 31R252N late planted, est. harvest date 4/7
Dale in a field of CS 30R212N Chilean "Huases" or Gauchos
