As temperatures sore into the 90s this week in western Illinois, Bayer Crop Science Technical Agronomist Lance Tarchionne reminds farmers that it’s not a bad time in the season to be hot. Despite being faced with an early heat wave, Tarchionne says that July and August are the “make or break” months for corn and soybean yields.
“We can take some heat, we can take some dry weather. The dryness is going to slow things down a little bit. A lot of these late-planted crops, even though it’s not that dry, have pretty shallow root systems,” says Tarchionne. “They don’t have very well-developed root systems. So if you’ve got plants living on the top foot of soil or less, and the surface gets dry, those plants will start to show stress.”
Tarchionne calls back to the 2023 growing season where farmers were faced with a dry May and June, received timely rains during pollination, and saw better-than-expected yields.
