Here’s the background on this soybean pod count comparison: Mike Williams farms and serves as an agronomist for Gold Eagle Co-op in central Iowa. A customer had a field of his soybeans hailed out this spring, and the farmer replanted June 8.
September 18, 2020 — Mike says that when the replanted beans reached about the third trifoliate, his farmer client sprayed two new products from Biodyne USA, at Mike’s encouragement. “I thought it’s a good time to try something new, to see if we could push the late-planted beans along.”
The farmer applied Biodyne’s BW-Advance at three pints per acre, along with BW-BioSpark at 8 ounces per acre. You can see the product label for BW-Advance as part of the product catalogue at this interactive link to bw-fusion.com. Flip through the pages of the online catalog until you come to the 2-7-7 BW-Advance page.
Our sources indicate that Advance is a blend of NPK and trace elements, a cane sugar derivative, Biodyne 401 and Biodyne Respite.
BW-BioSpark is a natural, non-microbial biostimulant produced for Biodyne. It’s also included in the online catalog linked above. Several of the Biodyne products are now manufactured at Fonda, Iowa. We’ll report more as results emerge.
The split-field trial indicates a response to these foliars: Treated soybeans averaged 103 pods per plant, untreated 64 pods. While neither pod count is spectacular, keep in mind these beans were planted June 8, and Mike’s region had slightly less than 5 inches of rainfall from May through August. Thus, all soybeans in counties around Pocahontas County faced challenges on retaining pods.
Later this fall, we’ll try to consolidate other field trials of these test products and learn what the combine yield monitors told Biodyne clients.
Biodyne rep Bob Wagner says the firm has several BioSpark trials this season on both corn and beans, and the treated fields look “very impressive.”
In 2020, Biodyne products were applied on more than two million acres, says Wagner. That’s significant growth for a new biologically-focused firm in seven seasons.
Larry Eekhoff, owner of the ag consulting firm Agronomy Rx at Webster City, IA, organized many of the Biodyne field trials. We anticipate that Larry will announce a post-harvest meeting to update farmers on this season’s results with Biodyne’s widening product line.