NASHVILLE, TENN. (RFD NEWS) — If insecticide applications are part of a routine soybean production program, new research suggests some growers may be spending money without seeing a yield benefit.
Nick Seiter, Field Crops Entomologist with the University of Illinois Extension, says researchers have spent the past three years evaluating the return on investment of insecticides applied to soybean seed and at different growth stages, including R3 and R5.
“For the last three years, we have been doing work looking at insecticide return on investment. [...] to see how often that provides a return in terms of soybean yield and what that does to the insect populations out there,” Seiter explains.
He says the trials have generally found pest populations staying below levels where an insecticide application would be expected to pay.
“The general overview we have seen so far is that we very rarely exceed the economic threshold of an insect pest,” Seiter continues. “The recommendations we have for when an insecticide is likely to provide a return have not been exceeded in these trials, and we have not returned a yield from those insecticides.”
Seiter recommends using insecticides when pest populations reach an economic threshold rather than applying them preventively.
