Andrew Kness, Senior Agriculture Agent | akness@umd.edu and Nicole Fiorellino, Assistant Professor & Extension Agronomist
University of Maryland
In recent years, many growers have expressed interest in and experimented with early maturing soybean maturity groups. The concept is appealing to some growers because it allows for an early harvest and earlier establishment of cover crops and/or small grains. However, there are a lot of questions related to how these early maturity groups can perform in our climate at our latitude and little data exists from our region to reference. With funding from the Maryland Soybean Board, we evaluated the agronomic characteristics of early maturity soybeans grown in a Maryland climate for their potential integration into Maryland grain rotations.
Soybean varieties ranging from maturity group (MG) 1.5-3.0 from two seed suppliers (Hubner and Pioneer) were planted on May 30, 2024 at the Wye Research and Education Center. All MG 1.5 and MG 2.0 Hubner brand plots were harvested on September 24 with remaining plots harvested on October 7th. Wheat was planted in the plots harvested at the first timing on October 10th and planted in the second harvest timing plots on October 23rd.
Mixed model analysis of variance was used to analyze the yield data, including brand (Hubner or Pioneer), maturity group, and interaction of the two. Significant effect of maturity group only (P=0.0008) with means separation by Tukey’s HSD (Figure 2).
Yields for all MGs were very strong; ranging from 55 bu/ac to nearly 70 bu/ac. Maturity group 3.0 yielded significantly more than MG 2 and 1.5 and similar to MG 2.5. Maturity groups 1.5 and 2.0 yielded similarly to each other.
This is only the first year of this study and we will conduct this research again in 2025. These preliminary data shows encouraging results and potential for early MG soybeans, which could offer some added benefits to establishing an early cover crop or a timelier planting of a subsequent wheat crop. Earlier cover crop establishment would have an environmental benefit in that more nutrients could be captured and saved for the next crop. Earlier establishment of wheat or other small grains, would also allow for more fall tiller development, which have the potential to contribute to more yield in the spring. We will see how the planting dates affect wheat yield in these plots next summer.
We would like to thank the Maryland Soybean Board for sponsoring this research, Hubner Seed for donating seed, and the farm crew at Wye Research and Education Center for supporting this project.
