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Northern Indiana | Couple different ways here. We do 8 rows of each variety. We do a test plot of new hybrids from 4 companies with a few “known” varieties mixed in to get a baseline from. We also do a plot of the varieties we plant each year to establish some sort of baseline for how they actually did in comparison to eachother. For example when we look at how a hybrid did on tough acres it’s sometimes hard to judge if it did well or not without knowing the baseline. We also aren’t afraid of putting plots on poor ground, something has to be planted there each year. We also do a mixed pass in our plots most of the time. Take some seed from each variety and mix it real nice then plant it. Sometimes it wins, sometimes it doesn’t. But we like to have a good laugh with one of the dealers that’s a good sport when it wins that we should’ve dumped all our seed in a blender and planted the whole farm that way. And we don’t play any games in our plots, I’m confident in saying we never do. They get treated exactly how we farm everything else. No point in having data that looks good on a company website but is meaningless for us to use for decision making. And for the dealers that really care we put a check variety in every other pass and compare each variety to the average of the check on each side and weight the plot by the check variety yield across the plot. We’ve also done some “product knowledge plots” for developing hybrids, we have some real beach sand that one of the big three uses every few years. Got into that about 30 years ago after having the regional guys out for a few years trying to find suitable varieties to plant. We try to be as straightforward as we can with the different dealers, if you want to publish the data you have to show up to help at planting and harvest. We found that’s the easiest way to avoid finger pointing or questioning variety placement when results don’t go how they wanted them to
Edited by JRCS Farms 11/23/2024 01:25
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How do you do your own plot tests?
