CNH Plant Stand Management

“Regardless of where they farm, growers agree that planting is the most critical operation on their farm”
Rockwood
Research Group

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2007 DeTerminator Plot Results

Thanks to several third-party cooperators (see left) Case IH was able to plant 13 DeTerminator plots in 5 different states this past spring. 41 different seeds sizes were tested at 7 different planting speeds. Over 610 side-by-side comparisons were conducted with 40,845 plant measurements taken.

Plots were planted with The DeTerminator planter which was specially designed and built for this research. The planter was setup in the following configuration:

Row 1 – AGCO White seed meter and row unit
Row 2 – Case IH Advanced Seed Meter and Early Riser row unit
Row 3 – Standard Kinze finger meter and row unit
Row 4 – Precision Planting seed meter and Kinze row unit
Row 5 - Case IH Advanced Seed Meter and Early Riser row unit
Row 6 – John Deere vacuum seed meter and row unit

Plant stand measurements were collected in June when plants were 4-8 leaf stage. Plant populations, in-row plant spacing and late emerging plants were recorded. Results from the various comparisons are expressed as Net Effective Stand Percentage.

Two Important Definitions

Net Effective Stand = total plant population minus (-) late emerging plants minus (-) poorly spaced plants
Net Effective Stand Percentage = net effective stand divided by (/) total plant population

Late emerging plants are easily identified because they have fewer leaves than plants that emerged uniformly. Poorly spaced plants have space between each other that is less distance or more distance than the target plant spacing. As important as proper plant spacing is, uniform emergence is much more critical to high yields. See the examples below that show lack of emergence uniformity and notice the impact on ear size.

Late Emerger