Soybeanyield® App, a New Tool for Predicting Soybean Yields.

Forecasting soybean yields before harvest is not an easy task. Soybean farmers will start making on-farm yield estimates as soon as the crop approaches the end of the season, from full pod stage or onset of grain filling. The major yield components for soybean are: 1) number of plants per area, 2) pods per plant, 3) seeds per pod, and 4) seeds per pound (seed weight). On-farm estimation of the first three components can be performed by following a simplified approach on counting plants in constant row length and quantifying pods and seeds per pod within the defined area. The main unknown seed yield factor is related to the final seed weight (determined at physiological maturity). Thus, an improvement of the estimation on this component can assist producers in forecasting soybean yields before harvest. Following this rationale, more than 5,000 soybean pods were individually screening with imagery collection and recording pod weight and its correlation with seed size/weight. Imagery collected from all individual pods was correlated to the final grain weight. An electronic application is currently under development with the goal not only of estimating final or maximum potential seed weight but also with the final objective of forecasting on-farm soybean yields before harvest. Development of this application and field evaluations are follow-up steps in the process of validating the tool including the essential step of developing educational materials for the technology transfer objective.