Bob’s Bits April 3rd, 2026

Good Day and welcome to another Bob’s Bits.  It is raining as I write this, but hopefully we get good weather before too long to continue the field work that some started this week.

I want to pass on a few bits of information before spring arrives and we all get crazy busy.

A couple of new products that we tested last year in our plot that showed great response were: Emergence-Z, and Victrato.

If you have used a Talc/Graphite product called Seed + Graphite in the past, Emergence-Z is an offshoot from that.  We have increased the Zinc load and rebranded as a Nexstar product.  This product contains the base of Talc/Graphite but also micronutrients (Zn, Ca, S, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, Mo), biostimulants, and metabolites.  It improves germination, plant vigor, and tolerance under stressful conditions.  It was tested in our plot by New Hampton on both corn and beans in 2025 and had significant yield results.  The plot was planted April 14^th, so it had a decent amount of cold stress to overcome. I actually rotary-hoed the plot on May 7^th to help with emergence, so you know it was struggling.  The results are shown below, corn had a 12 bu increase and beans a 3.2 bu increase.  We are not promising those results all the time, but it goes to show that it does help with stressful conditions.

Emergence Z Yield Response

Another product we tested which got a label late in 2025 was Victrato from Syngenta.  This is a new soybean seed treatment for Sudden Death Syndrome and Soybean Cyst Nematodes.  It is a step up from the Saltro we have used in the past.  From what I was told, we had the only plot in the state where we were able to compare the standard seed treatment, Salto, and Victrato side by side.  The other plots did not have the Saltro comparison in them.  The results show a good stair step up in yield from the standard treatment, to adding Saltro (+1.4 bu), versus adding Victrato (+3 bu).  The Victrato was 1.6 bu better than the Saltro.  We have switched almost exclusively to using Victrato this year instead of Saltro, but I don’t know of many competitor seed companies that are switching, and many are still using Ilevo for SDS and SCN treatments.

Victrato Yield Response

I read some research from Iowa State University last year about planting dates of corn vs soybeans.  It goes along with what I have been saying for years: “Plant your beans early and plant your corn right!”  Their data shows that soybeans have the competitive advantage to ROI when planting before April 20, whereas that advantage switches to corn after April 20^th.  This is data for all of Iowa so we must be aware of our conditions in NE Iowa, but I think we have learned the past couple years that it is ok to plant beans first.  We have all seen that beans can tolerate less than perfect planting and emergence conditions, but the earlier they are in the ground, the more nodes they will produce, which leads to higher yield potential.  Also, research shows that you want all your corn to emerge within 24-36 hours of each other for maximum yield.  I listened to a talk given by national record corn growers Randy Dowdy and David Hula this winter, and one thing that stuck with me was them saying, “you’ll never hit 300 bushel if your corn lays in the ground 10 days or more before emerging.”  Every year there is a window of time that corn should not be planted during.  Let’s do our diligence to watch ahead and avoid those windows.

You can see in the following charts the planting date advantage for corn vs beans, and the drop off in yield from each crop with planting dates.

Thank you and I look forward to getting started on another crop year.  Feel free to reach out to me anytime with questions or concerns.

Bob Sobolik

641.330.1815