Soybean cupping is turning out to be a big issue this year. Generally, it is caused by off-target herbicide drift and agronomists are seeing it more this year than before.
Providing foliar nutrition can give the crop some relief from the stress, but timing is the key to success.
According to Dr. Jim Smart, “If there are toxic pesticides on the plant, we need to give the plant time to metabolize or volatilized or otherwise break down, because if we try to stimulate growth of the plant and it’s already got a growth regulator on it that has goofed up the hormones in the plant, we may actually cause more damage to the plant, rather than helping it. So, we need to give the plants a couple of weeks to let that herbicide break down and then foliar nutrition may be helpful if it’s a very small dosage, and it occurred early in the life of the plant.”
Dr. Smart says that if the plants were already flowering, the flowers and buds that are present when the herbicide damage occurs are mostly non-productive.
Related:
Unfavorable weather conditions may affect the efficacy of herbicide application
Tight supplies of herbicide fungicide expected to persist through 2022