The Louisiana soybean producers continued to make progress in the 2020 planting season; however, progress slowed as rainstorms fell going into the last week and toward the end of the week. According to the USDA, the planting progress over the two previous weeks (April 26-May 10) increased from 33% to 68%, increasing 17%-18% week over week. Due to weather, the soybean planting season slowed from May 10-May 17, with producers adding only 7% toward completion. While keeping the 2020 planting season ahead of 2019, the progress fell slightly behind the five-year average. In addition, 1% of the soybean crop has begun to flower and 98% of the crop’s condition is reported to be rated fair to excellent. However, a small percent of the crop has dropped out of the good to excellent range.

Figure 1: The 2020 Louisiana soybean planting progress
continues to be ahead of the 2019 planting season as of
May 17 but has fallen slightly behind the five-year average.

Planting Date by Maturity Group Trial

A planting date trial is being conducted at the Dean Lee Research Station. The goals of this research are to help determine the optimum planting window for soybean and to evaluate the growth and development of the different maturity groups planted from March to June. Table 1 shows the early growth and development of planting dates one and two as of May 19, 2020. For the first planting date, all varieties have begun flowering with the early maturity group varieties reaching the beginning pod stage. For the second planting date, the MG 3, MG 4, and two MG 5 varieties have begun flowering. Early observations suggest very little to no difference in the number of days between planting date and the onset of flowering, or the plants vegetative stage at the onset of flowering, between the two March planting dates. We will continue to monitor the growth and development for all six planting dates.

Figure 2: Two out of six planting dates with groups of maturity consisting of 3.9-4.4; 4.5-4.8; and 5.0-5.4 are shown.
The growth stages of the plants at onset of flowering (R1) and the growth stages (GS) as of May 19, 2020 are shown.

While walking a field last week in St. Mary Parish we identified redbanded stinkbug (RBSB) adults, egg masses and nymphs. After walking the field, a text was sent to an LSU AgCenter commodity text group. To join the commodity text group for soybean, send a text message to 81010 with @lasoybean in the body of the message. The same can be done for other crops.

Figure 3. Adult redbanded stinkbugs were
identified in St. Mary Parish on May 12, 2020.

Figure 4: Redbanded stinkbug egg masses were
identified in St. Mary Parish on May 12, 2020.

Figure 5: Redbanded stinkbug nymphs were
identified in St. Mary Parish on May 12, 2020.