 of a small but great group for discussion for this talk. So I'm Beth Nelson, and I'm with the USDA SAIR program, which is Sustainable Ag Research and Education. I'm going to go ahead and introduce Dan Rossman, who's talking to us about his swiping variety of trials today. OK, thank you very much. The four weeks that we talk about the trials themselves, I'll just introduce myself a little bit more. I am a county extension educator in Michigan, right in the center of part of Michigan. My expertise is field crops. Back then, I've been an extension educator since 1980. 1980, it's been 34 years. In 1995, I had a group of farmers come to me in my area and say, we've heard about organics. We want to learn a little bit more about it. And I said, well, I don't know a lot about organics, but I'll learn with you. And we started the journey at that time. And the group has grown, and the number of farmers involved has increased, and our knowledge has greatly increased. And along the way, we've come to several different points where we needed more information. And the swiping variety is one problem that we ran into, and this grant has really helped us to try to solve that. And I'll get on with some of this a little bit more. First of all, the soybean challenges, the seed challenges that we had in 1995 when we started looking at organics in our area. Back then, everything was non-GMO, so all the companies had seed available that we could choose from. And also, there's a lot of data about what varieties were good and yielded that and so on. So a lot of availability, the roles of organics at that time, we didn't have the NLP standards. And so you could still use conventional seed as long as it was non-GMO. There wasn't any big issue with that. But as time went on, we started running them differently. All the major companies that we were used to dealing with no longer carried non-GMO seed anymore. We had the NLP roles that we needed to source organic seed and there we possibly could. And all of a sudden, our choices of seed varieties for soybeans dwindled and dwindled and dwindled. And we were faced with a few varieties that were 25, 30 years old that we had to choose from. We had some companies that were still having some non-GMO seed available. They call it non-GMO. But when we tested it, we had a problem with seed contamination. It was contaminated because they used the same equipment of their glyphosate tolerant seed as they did their non-GMO seed and there was cross contamination. So that posed some doors on some of those seed sources. There was very few breeding programs that were available. The data, we didn't have good data in our area of the varieties that were available. And some of the companies were names we weren't used to. And there's just a lack of awareness of what varieties were there. And this next slide here kind of shows the big picture of what has happened in the seed industry. And each one of these large circles here actually represents a chemical company. And all of these little lines are ownership or partial ownership of all these other seed companies. And so like Monsanto has bought out all of these small companies, seed companies of all sorts of types. Some of them are quite large seed companies like the Calvin, Asgerow, Sygentus, they have the Old North or King, the NK varieties, the Golden Harvest and those type of varieties. Dupont is pioneer and all those other type ones. Nalag or Sciences. Dairyland is one that you might be familiar with that's under that one. And Microgen, then Bear is up in that corner. So all of those represents companies and what's their main emphasis these chemical companies, what's their main emphasis of the varieties that they offer? Traits, you know, traded seeds so they want to sell chemicals too but all of their, a lot of their choices that you have are traded seed. And so all the traits, all the traits are GMO traits. And so all of a sudden all of this research and development that used to be available for all the farmers and even the organic farmers back years ago. Now they're all GMO traded and all the research and development is going in that area. So we're lacking, whole pool is gone from our ability to use. So we do have in our mind a lot of opportunities when it comes to our seed. We had producers that were very committed, that were very interested in doing something about the soybean seed dilemma that we had. And we had not all the producers but we had some buyers as well. We do have a significant number of acres of production in Michigan. We were probably over 400,000 bushels in Michigan at the current time. A real key thing that was kind of a hidden jewel was that we had a soybean breeder right at Michigan State University that was working with tofu, non-GMO varieties that we hardly knew existed. And we were kind of misled thinking that someday we're going to see some varieties being released from this program but we were never seeing any. And the main reason is a kind of two fold. His, he was getting feedback from the soybean checkout promotion committee which actually is funding most of his work. That the type of varieties that they were looking for were the straight line varieties that do well in narrow rows, shorter plants. And those were just the two opposite characteristics that the organic producers were looking for. So many of the varieties that the organic producers would want to see were being thrown out of the program. And plus the way the whole system now works as far as varieties being released, it used to be they used to go through the crop improvement association and they'd be these public varieties being released. Now they're all private and you need to speak up for one of the lines in the breeding program and that's all privatized. So we had never seen directly. They're always just being fed out throughout private companies for their own use. And so we understood how that whole system worked. So now lines are being saved and actually selected for organics and we understand the process to have getting those varieties in the farmer's hands. So in a few years, hopefully we'll see some of that happening. We, we, we were aware of the other breeding programs in Iowa State University and also in Minnesota, the breeding programs they had and also the private seed companies that have breeding programs brought everybody together for this, this project. And then we had a lot of past experience and success doing on-farm research demonstration plots of all sorts. So that's kind of the, we saw we had an opportunity here so we wanted to go forward. We had a first attempt back in 2010. And we had some, we had four sites, we compared 40 varieties. We didn't have any special funding for this first project. There's a strong interest, but we realized right away, we can't do this again because we used up all of our little tickets of favors of other researchers and equipment and so on because we beg borrowed and steeled equipment and planners and technicians. And we were told we can't continue unless we have some funding. So we put some grants together, so some applications and lo and behold, we had two funders that thought this was a worthy project. And so we worked out a deal both with the Sears Trust and also with the SARE that the Sears Trust and SARE that would actually have this be a long-term project. So we have six years of funding for this project which is really, really exciting. We should be able to really advance the varieties during that time. A key part of this whole thing and what was explained earlier was the farmers involvement. And we're doing this not just to have a research project, we're not just doing this for some graduate students, master's program or PhD program. We're doing it to serve the farmers and also to also serve the end consumers who want certain types of varieties. And so this advisory group is made up of a number of organic farmers to make sure as we go along that it's steered in a direction that's going to benefit them in the end. And one big benefit is that they'll have a number of good quality varieties that meet their agronomic needs, that meets the buyer's needs, that's in the maturity range and those type of things that they're happy with. And also that there'll be an ongoing, sustainable type of a system where they can have input of new variety releases and know how to get varieties into their hands through the whole system. Because it is different than it was 20 years ago. Another key part of this advisory group are the buyers because we don't want to have a bean that's just high yielding that has the right agronomic traits. We want a beans that also meet the demands whether it's a tofu market or a soil milk market or whatever it might be. So we're always, we want to make sure their input is there as well because a lot of times it'll be the buyers or the seed producers combined together that are important part of how the seed is gonna be released and get in the hands of the farmer. And also the MSU soybean breeder. He is a very, very, of course, a central part of this because of the breeding lines, he has access to thousands, literally thousands of lines of soybeans and he has this nursery that he can observe and make selections through on an annual basis and then put those into his select lines to advance for the producers. And then I'm in the MSU extension and our job is to coordinate the whole effort, get the outreach and share the results with producers as well. Here's our trial sites and the place where they're located is not just by happenstance. Three of the sites, the sites right in here, those sites are sites right on farmer's property, on farm research. And then this one is over here is a university certified organic site. All sites are certified organic under organic conditions because that's how we wanted to see how the varieties performed. And this, if you take Michigan and go kind of on a diagonal right here, this is a key part of our production agriculture, our field crops. This area is a good ag producing area too, but there's also something else here called Detroit. But so a major part of our ag is right here, soybeans. This is a major part of the soybean production area. Probably this thumb area and the central part of the state is the biggest concentration of organic field crop producers as well. So that's why it's kind of located where they're at. The soil type here, this is all lakebed soil and years ago when the glaciers receded, they left lakebed soils right around the sag and obey here and through the thumb. So this was pretty much all nice, long Park Hill type soil through this area. So highly productivity, high productivity. This site down here, Kellogg Biological Station, the university site. This site is a part of the glacial morangs from the sand and gravel. So this is a much lighter soil type, sandy loam type system. You look at those dots and they look like in 2012 and 2013, they're in the same location, but they've changed just a little bit. Kellogg Biological Station, you can see they've same location both years. And then this dot right here at the Broccoli Farm, same location both years. But this changed slightly from Isabella County to Grashia County in 2012, 2013. And in Tuscola County, it switched to neighboring farms. The Volmer Farm, he's on the advisory committee. The reason why we had to go away from Mark Volmer's farm is because they switched from 30-inch rows to 20-inch rows. And the equipment that we have is all 30-inch rows. And that's the majority of the soybean organic producers are all 30-inch rows, but they switched to 20 so no longer could we fit our equipment with his equipment. But he's very much interested, so I want to be part of it. And Tom was just thought he didn't have a good enough field for 2013, but he still wants to be part of it as well. So we had some minor switching of producers, but pretty much they're still very committed into the program, even though there's that switch. Yes. That's significant for the study to see. Well, we're keeping the row at 30-inches, but since his farm wasn't 30-inch and went to 20, we had to put the trial in his neighbor's farm, who was still in 30-inch. So the trial is all still in 30-inch rows. But the one cooperator, the reason why he didn't stay as a cooperator is because his whole farming operation switched to 20-inch rows. Does that answer your question? I'm sorry I should have repeated that, so. I was kind of curious as to, obviously that was a significant thing for the study, was that a significant thing for that variety? Oh, oh. Is that why the 30-inch rows? Oh, why, the question is, is it significant of the 20 versus the 30-inch rows? That is a significant item of consideration. We have a few organic farmers that are in 20-inch rows. A vast majority are planting in 30-inch rows for the soybeans. Down the road, maybe five, 10, 20 years from now, we'll have maybe more of the organic farmers in 20-inch rows. But it does make a difference if the varieties are planted in 30-inch rows versus 20-inch rows, because then maybe we'd be looking more at the straight line varieties. In the 30-inch rows, the whole thing that we're looking for are the more of the bushy type that will canopy. And if we narrow down the rows to 20 or 15 or seven-inch rows in organics, if we would go down that narrow, maybe then it'd be the straight line beans that we'd be looking at. And that was one issue that we had with the breeder early on. He was selecting just for the straight line beans and actually tossing the bush type beans from the program. Any other questions related to that? Did that answer a little bit better? Yes. Okay. Okay, our seed sources, of course, without our seed sources, we couldn't even do a trial like this. The first one is the Broccarty Farm. They were actually, this one right here, was actually keeping that 30-year-old variety alive, Vinton 81. Vinton 81 is just a mainstay as far as a soybean variety in the tofu market. It's one that's very highly thought of overseas in Japan. And it's the standard that all the other soybeans are tested for as far as tofu quality. And that variety would probably be non-existent if that particular farm had not kept the certification going year after year of that one variety. And it pretty much came down to that, plus a handful of others were the only ones that were being considered because we were running out of sources of organic seed. DF seeds in Dansville, Michigan, that is a private breeder in Michigan. And he not only does Life of St. Tolerant varieties, he also does the non-GMO varieties. And he has produced a couple varieties that has worked very well for organic producers or at least gave us hope that we had somebody actually providing varieties for that particular group of producers. John Deal is the breeder there. Organic bean and grain, that's actually the business name for Walmers. They're not only a producer, but also they're a buyer or a receiver of organic beans and grain. They actually bought the rights to an older variety that a major seed company had that was going away from non-GMO. So they bought rights for one variety that's about 15 to 20 years old right now. And that's one we'll talk about a little bit later. Sanapta, they're out of Holt, Minnesota, but they're a major buyer of soy milk and also tofu varieties in our area and a certain amount of feed beans. Schillingers, they're another private seed breeding outfit and they have some genetics that some of the growers were looking at and thinking might be good. Albert Lee is another seed supplier out of Minnesota. Blue River Hybrids is another one out of Iowa. And those were the private seed sources that we identified that we're dealing with and we're always looking to see if we're missing a company. There's some other ones out throughout the United States but having varieties that are actually suitable for our area that have the right maturity. So these are the ones that we identified that we're working with and there could be some more added in the future. The universities we're working with are the ones in the upper Midwest, the University of Minnesota and their crop improvement program, Iowa State University and then the Michigan State Breeding Program. This is how our plots have been set up for both of our years in 2012 and 2013. We tried to, we want to have over 40 varieties and in 2013 we had 48 varieties. In 2012 we had 51 varieties so we're keeping that quite consistent. The way that we set these plots up were identical. The way that the conventional soybean varieties are all analyzed for their performance on through the campus program. The state soybean comparison of soybean varieties. We modeled it after their system. As a field crops agent, I've been doing variety testing for my whole career but it's all been on farm scale. And so normally I'm used to having 15 to 20 foot widths going a quarter mile or more across the field using the farmer's equipment. So this is a little bit different for me but it works good in the organic standpoint when we're trying to review the performance of this number of varieties. And it would be too expensive on organic farm to try to have major soybean trials because here's the area that we're using on one farm is a small, small footprint compared to what I described how we normally did extension plots. We'd be taking up 60 acres of their field or more trying to do a good job with analyzing the performance of the variety. So this much smaller footprint is working much better to do this first stage of this analyzing, trying to screen these number of varieties. So we have the four locations of 50 varieties or so. We're replicating every location four times. So we're looking at each variety 16 times. They're all in 30 inch rows. They're two row plots. And our plant population is quite high compared to conventional standards but with organics we've got rotary hose. We have leaders and cultivators. So we want to make sure we have a good stand. So we have a hefty plant population but all the plots we plant 26 feet then we trim them down and see this plot over here is trimmed down to 20 feet. So we have alleyways between it and that helps not only at harvest time that we're harvesting just the 20 feet but when we have the producers come and look at the plots it gives access to the locations as well. The planter that we use is a monosin planter. It's designed to, it's a very efficient planter, very good as far as precision. It places the seed very exact where we want it. And it was easy to change the varieties adopted to make it a plot type unit. And plus being four rows we can take it down the road pretty easy on trailers. One key thing of this project is that we just didn't want to plant the plots and have the yield data for harvest. We want the farmers to be actively involved, get to know these varieties, be out in the field during the growing season so they could see the characteristics that were important to them. And you can see the different field days that we had. We normally work with the organic farmers of Michigan that's a marketing cooperative and they have a field day and when they have their meeting during the summer we take them out to our sites that might be close by to that type of event. Then I have my own tours where we go to each one of the sites and the farmers evaluate them and then the catalog biological station has some field days as well. But you can see some pictures of different events. Some were earlier in the season, some were a little later, but the farmers had a chance to look at the varieties, get familiar with them and see how they looked as far as the canopy, the shape of the plant, the potting of the plant, the maturity of the plant compared to the other ones. And they were able to take notes and pictures and talk to one another about them just to get more familiar with those varieties. And so when we were talking about advancing a variety, they already knew what it was going to be looking like. Okay, as far as soybean selection criteria, that's what I want to talk about now, the producers have a set of things that they're looking at and the buyers have a set of criteria they're looking at and we have to mesh the two together. And so the producers, I asked them, what are those characteristics they're important to you? Early vigor is very important. Why would early vigor be important? Oh yeah, the key thing is you want something that will get out of the ground fast, early vigor so that help with their weed control. Because they're going to be doing their rotor hoeing, maybe running a weed or, but then they want to cultivate as soon as they can before the weeds have any size to them to bury up weeds and they want the plant to have a, some height differentiation of any weeds that may start. So early vigor, they don't want something that will start really slow and takes forever to get to a cultivator height. Now, I have bushy here, but they don't want it overly bushy. What would happen if a variety is really, really, really bushy? Well, the answer is a damage when you rotor hoar or cultivate, not necessarily. It's later on in the season. I'll help you out a little bit. There's a disease called white mold. And if you have something that's too bushy, a lot of times it's more susceptible to white mold. So we need to be a little careful about this characteristic that we don't want a variety that's overly susceptible to white mold. And that's one thing that we look at a little bit as well. And I have it down here, but we want one that's bushy enough so that we do get early canopy. The reason why we want canopy and an early canopy is because if any weeds do escape and we do have a little weed pressure, the thicker that canopy, the more spindly those weeds are going to be. So if you have a nice thick canopy, the weeds may be there, but they're not going to amount to a lot because you're going to have a lot of competition with the soybeans. We want a variety that's tall or medium tall. We don't want one that's so small it's hard to get into the combine. And we want one that's tall enough, the same reason as this early canopy because the taller the bean, the chances are it's going to compete with the weeds better. White mold resistance, like I mentioned here, that is a disease of concern. We are in 30 inch row, so we have less of a problem with white mold. But if we do get an overly bushy one, that could be a problem. Pod height, of course, any producer may want a certain pod height off the ground because it was too close to ground and may lose some of the yield. We want a high yielding bean. And if we didn't care about high yielding, we'd stay with a Vinton 81 for the rest of our lives, but we want one that's going to yield a little better. And we have a maturity that we prefer, a 1.8 to 2.3. So a 1.8 to 2.3 maturity. In Ohio here, what do you normally do? A three, a three-two, what's the maturity in Ohio? About a three. There are some in our program here. I'm going to show you that you may want. It's a little too long season for us, but it might be ideal for you. The buyers, of course, they're looking at protein, seed size, the taste, hyalum color, the germination, then that's something they use to do with the tofu yield and sugar content. And here's a little bit more about these criteria. The criteria differs based on what are we going to be doing about the end use. So here's some of our major uses of the soybeans. And one thing is tofu. And that's the premium market. Right now that's $28 to $30 a bushel, that particular market. The beans are required to be high protein, and this 37% is 30% as is. If you go to dry matter, the percentage is going to be more like 42, 43, if you do the math. But it has to be a minimum of about that 37%. The vintage soybeans is usually 39 to 40% at the 13% moisture. Tofu has to be a large seeded bean, usually 20,000, excuse me, usually 2,000 per pound. A light or clear hyalum, a low oil, high germination. Soy milk beans, that's another big market for Michigan producers. The protein still ought to be fairly high, but it can be a medium to high protein. The natto bean is a really, really small bean. And it's one that's used in Japan. They ferment that bean. It has to be a high sugar type bean, very small seeds. And I mentioned with the tofu, it'd be about 2,000 seeds per pound. The natto bean is about 4,500 beans per pound. So quite a lot different. Feed, of course, if I put unrestricted, I'm not really sure what term I ought to use for that. But the feed beans end up being the beans that don't make the other classifications here. And sometimes somebody will raise a bean specifically for feed, because it'd be a high-yielding bean and maybe a dark-colored hyalum. So it wouldn't work in these other markets, but they want a higher yield, and so they'll choose one that might be a dark-colored hyalum but still be a non-GMO. Then there's some other uses here as well. But these are the major ones that our producers have. The bottom left picture, this one here. Okay, that's the natto bean. That's the natto bean. It's a very small bean. And they ferment it. And when they ferment it, it ends up having this stringy consistency. I'm told it smells really bad, but it's a very favorable treat in Japan. And that is a special niche market. Okay, here's a few pictures just to show you what the plots looked like prior to harvest. The plots, we had field days at all the plots, and so most of the plots were all signed. And so farmers, not only during the field day, could they go look at the plots, but they could go through right up until harvest to observe the plots and go back to them and see how things were looking, how they were standing, if they're lodging, the order of maturity, and so on. During harvest, that's when we took the plant height, the measurement, of course, that's when we did the yield. Then after harvest, in the lab, we did the protein oil and had the seed count. A little kinkake combine here is what we used. This was one that Kellogg Biological Station had purchased. And so we were leasing this from them. So it's made for a real good opportunity to have a good machine to utilize. Results. One thing that when individuals do research, a lot of time they'll publish a report or something and it gets hidden somewhere or left in a file or satisfy where we're sponsoring the results. But one thing we want to do, the whole reason we're doing this, is to make sure that the information gets out to the producers and the end users. So one place where we share the results every year is called the Mid-Michigan Crop Report. That's a publication I do in Mid-Michigan with a couple other educators with all of our on-farm research. We have probably about 20 to 30 different trials of all sorts of different things that we do. We included this organic work in that report that goes predominantly to all the producers, even the conventional producers, so they can see what's going on. There's over 1,000 copies of that right around Mid-Michigan. But also the results are available on the MSU variety trial website. That was last year. We're going to have it on this year. We have some links right now down here where if you wanted to get the results right now, the handout that was on the table over here are the results for 2013. In December I have a marketing workshop for the organic producers and we have anywhere from 30 to 50 or more that would attend that in the thumb and we pass out the preliminary results of that time to the producers. I also have a mailing list of about 250 organic producers, field crop producers in Michigan, and they were all received a direct mail with that publication that we did plus another insert that had the two-year averages on it so they could see. Besides the two-year averages, the steps of how to release, get a variety released, the whole procedure of how varieties advance so they could see that and if there's one that they like, they know the procedure, okay, I like that variety, how can we get that released to the producers? Also the seed suppliers that are part of our program, they have the results as well and they can use it through their channels and then here's the links through the MSU cover crop site. I've talked about the results. I was in Ontario at a meeting and shared the results with the group that I talked to there. I'm going to have an MSU research reporting session that I'm going to be a part of in March. It's going to be March the 7th and this will be one of the topics that we'll be talked about and shared as well. How are we doing so far? Well, here is just a few of our numbers of the performance. One thing that's exciting in 2012, what was production like in your area in 2012? You had a major drought. Well, I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that in the central part of Michigan and where we were at and where most of these plots were at, we actually got rain. Timely rain right at the nick of time and I'm embarrassed because we didn't have, we had the best soybean yields in history in our area. And as you can see in 2012, we had some of the individual varieties, individual reps yielding over 70 bushels of the acre. And just unbelievable. The Tascola site and the Lapeer site in 2012, both of them yielded in the high 50 bushels, you know, 59, 56. The Kellogg Biological Station in 2013 actually had rain this year and they were nearly 60 bushel average. Another key thing is, you remember I mentioned this, Vinton 81, that was that standard soybean for the Toa Fool Market. And one thing that we're trying to do is find varieties that are going to be as good or better to replace that variety. And we identified seven varieties that had protein that qualified and then they yielded more than the Vinton. They yielded four or more bushels more than the Vinton. Seven of the type of varieties. And we had several companies actually approach the MSU breeder saying, hey, I'm interested in this variety, I'm interested in that variety. So we're starting that process that some of these may be released. Here's a few of the promising lines and I just want to mention this one. This is one that you're going to, you'll see some more data in a moment. 51 81, it's a Toa Fool variety. 51 81, remember that. Then the other one, you can't see it as good, but that's 71 30. Those are two varieties in particular. There's several other ones that are high interest. Here's the performance of the Toa Fool type varieties. Remember I said there's seven varieties or so and I might have added another one in here. But here's the Vinton bean and you can see the red bar is the performance in 2012. The blue bar is the performance in 2013. And you can see that all of these Toa Fool type beans all perform this one. So these all have merit. These are all exciting beans to look at. These two are ones that have been used by organic farmers. And here's this 51 81. Over eight bushels better. This variety here has been tested for a Toa Fool quality and it meets the Vinton 81. Very similar as the Vinton 81 for Toa Fool quality. Eight bushels better. And the breeder has 350 pounds today ready for increase. So it's not very much, but it's the first stage of increase. So we're quite excited about the potential of this one. This one here too is another one. What's exciting about this variety is that it actually has a protein level higher than this one. That's the same or higher than this one. This makes the Toa Fool quality. But this one has a lot of the other traits. This is a medium height one. This is a tall one. This one is a little earlier maturity. So this one may be, even though it's not yelling as much, may have some other traits that we're looking for as well. So we're quite excited about this. This is a mowa. You can see it. It looks like it's very close to this one here. The trouble with this one is it's a group three maturity. The question is, do the buyers blend based on protein content? They can, but one thing that they're looking for is consistency. So they can do a blend, but they need consistency and they need taste as well. So it's depending on what the formula is and so on. They can get in trouble if they're blending too much. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, that's the whole thing in the Toa Fool type varieties. Predominantly, we were getting a much lower yield with the high protein varieties, but we're getting a higher premium. The premium for the Toa Fool types, like I said, is like that $28 to $30 of bushel. Feed grade beans are quite high, but it's down to like $24 Okay. Here's a little bit I mentioned already that one new one from Michigan State, the 5181, does have a 8.8 bushel advantage over the Vintas. If you put a dollar per acre, $250 roughly to the producer. And then some of the other current varieties, like I mentioned, there was some other ones on the list that farmers have available to use. Some of the other Toa Fool varieties that the private companies have is about a 4 bushel increase over those, so about $100 an acre. Here's the other type varieties. These would be the Soymout varieties, the Feed type. These all have lower protein levels. And here's an exciting one from Michigan State, the 10174. The one issue with this one, that's like a 2.9. So this is a good one for Ohio. This is one of the CFCs. Another high-yielding one. And you can see how well that one is doing, but that is a longer maturity one as well. About a 2.6 or so. This Iowa variety, another one that's a little too long season for us. But you can see those are performing real well. This one is probably one of the better ones for our area, the right maturity, and that one will likely be and here's some of the key ones here that are looking exciting for our area too. This is the one that was purchased by the Valmer family the organic bean and grain from a private company and so they try to save this. This was the other standard that we were going from buying. So this is kind of standard in the Soymout or the non-tofu market and the other, the Vinton was a standard in the tofu. So those were the two targets for us to be as good or performing better. You know we were lost really on how do these varieties get from the breeder and get in the farmers hands. And so here's the steps to advance the MSU soybean varieties to the farmers and so they first have to identify a variety you'd like and let the breeder know that he goes through the university process and then there has to be another process for the production committee because they own rights to these varieties and then eventually you get seed to increase the breeder will increase it then you get some seed to increase you do your own evaluations then if you like that then you name it and then you a couple years later then you'll have enough seed to put it on the market. So there's a few years involved in here to make the process work and you know we thought this was all automatic and we're waiting for these varieties to pump out of the system and they weren't being pumped out we realized we had to be a part of the system and so we all realize that now and we're all working to make that happen. Initial steps additional steps that we want to do I mentioned that we're doing these we're looking at about 50 varieties every year and we're looking them in these small plots and that's real good, we're getting a good handle on that but we want to do the next step is to make sure that if we put them in a whole field or put them in strips of field with farmers equipment that they're really going to be performing the way the farmers want to so what we want to do once we identify three or four varieties or just one or two varieties even we get enough seed for them we want to start putting them on farmers farms and have field scale trials and then we want to make sure we continue to communicate our findings making sure that we're not just doing this all in a vacuum and no one's going to hear what we're doing and that's not going to go anywhere we want to make sure that there's good communication good sharing the findings we want feedback back not only to our breeder but also the breeder at Iowa State and also the breeder up in Minnesota and also the private companies we want a good communication going back and eventually we want to have some excellent varieties in the release of the farmers and not relying on genetics and varieties from 30 years ago we have some up-to-date varieties and moving the whole industry forward now we could stop right here and have some questions or you can take a look at these individual varieties and individual characteristics I'm not sure what you want to do here these are what are you thinking about pioneer pioneer is an excellent company and pioneer is owned by DuPont pioneer has just a couple varieties that are available as a non GMO for our area and one thing we need to be careful of is making sure that those varieties that they have not contaminated and that's a key concern how they're being produced and so on just like any other company and you probably have a list of some there we've had a pioneer we've had a couple pioneer in some of our other trials non GMO trials but they're not all clear hyalum they're not all tofu type varieties they're more of the feed type but it's not what you think think about they're invited to participate so I I'm not talking about pioneer and I myself I do not want to do it anymore I have it here that's maybe something that we can talk about later let's talk about later I can but we can talk about that later too because there's a lot to do with fertility and weed management for our trials the fertility is all based on what the farmers normally do with their practices so most of them build up their fertility for the corn in their rotation and so ahead of these plots usually there's not additional nutrients put on depending on what their soil tests have been and what their practice are but a lot of them are utilizing lifestyle manure or poultry manure and they don't need an oxygen for soybeans so of course that goes on ahead of the corn and then they have extra phosphorus and potassium for soybeans if they don't have enough potassium then they may put on potassium sulfate something like that did you test soil tests? how consistent they were with pesticides? part of their certification is required that they need soil tests or that part of their certification I don't have the soil test records for them the weed management it's all based individually but the plots themselves if there was a weed issue or problem we had some technicians go out there and clean them up a little bit so the weed pressure was minimal but here's the vinten variety here and you can see that the protein is about a 40% protein that 5181 is actually a 37% so it is a little lower protein that is one concern but this is a real tall being at 40 inches and 5181 shorted bean at 32 inches so it is a shorter bean but it does have that 8 bushel yield advantage and also it is ready to be released so ready to be released so how many years then? from the breeder standpoint they've increased the seed to that 350 pounds and that seed goes out increased by whoever is interested in it and then all the documentation have to be signed through the university and the soybean promotion committee and then they can test out when they have enough seed build up so two more years two more years and here's just some of the other ones if you want to take a look at some this is the one that I is most like the vinten as far as the height the seed size and plus still having a premium yield on it so I almost think this is more of a replacement, a direct replacement for the vinten the other one looks like it will could replace it this one could replace it this one might be a tofu might be a good soil amount replacement and this one is almost a perfect replacement for the vinten so those are probably to me the two most exciting ones here's the one I mentioned the highest yielding one over all of the plants hands down but you see the protein is a lower protein level and the maturity is too long for us but 55.8 bushels over all locations for two years this is an excellent producing one so Ohio there you go and this is probably the highest yielding non tofu one that's in our maturity range that is pretty exciting to probably be released for milk there's an auto bean very very small you look at the pod you say this is boy that's potted up but the beans are really really small and so you can see the yield is quite low too in comparison so there are some of the private companies Iowa this was actually almost tied for the highest yielding one in the trial but see the maturity is a little bit too long for the organic producers and this is one that very strong non tofu type variety the right maturity high yielding one but you can see the seed size for tofu we need the seed size more of a 2,000 that's too small for that but it would be good for perhaps a feed type bean this is the one that was bred in Michigan through the DFC program had a lot of excitement about this variety but the key thing here is 2.5 is just still a little too long maturity for for the organic producers because one thing that we do for wheat control is delayed planting a little bit and this can get us in trouble but you can see the protein is right there for tofu and the seed size is good yield is good but the maturity scares us a little bit we've had producers use this but sometimes we get scared with it this is probably one of the substitutes right now on the marketplace for the Vinton this has been available for a few years Albert Lee is selling this but it's an Iowa number 2053 one thing wrong with this one it is a nice bushy shorter type plant it is 36 inches so it's not real short it's a lot of old issues that particular variety any other questions? I have some questions I'm just not sure if they might be outside of your I'm interested in moving in this direction and I'm sure they're not so you're a slimy producer you said earlier can you have a fire but you're going to have conventional fires and you're wondering do I want to be an organic farmer I would love to be but I need people who are willing to work okay so you own the land so you're the landlord you don't think your tenants would be interested in switching who knows but I have to sell it to them sell the idea to them sell the idea that this is going to be good for everybody there's a lot of barriers like contamination if they have dual if they have some of their land raising conventional GMO type crops on it and then they want to farm yours organically they got to be very very careful because of the contamination issue yes but some people do it and there are some certifiers that will work through with you and help make that happen but it is more difficult and you're looking at it a lot more carefully I can talk to you quite a lot about things that you may want to utilize to help sell the idea for producers what I found with conventional producers either they're open to the idea or they don't anyone listen to and so I don't know who your producers are and how receptive they are but if they are not receptive at all then you have two choices just continue to utilize those individuals as your farmers as your managers and let them do what they want to do and work with them or over time if that's the route you want to go then identify somebody who might be willing and if they're willing to talk to you well then there's way, there's mentors there's people they can talk to you have a couple certifiers here in Ohio you have the other side of Columbus that is outstanding certifier and I think this organization here is a certifier too well I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up so I know several of you have questions you're going to follow up with but I want you to be able to get to the next session and I want to thank Dan for driving down for this so thank you very much