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Farming the Details: Resilience in Soybean Performance
In 2023, Alex Harrell became the first farmer to break 200 bu/A on soybeans. Then he broke his own record in 2024 with 218 bu/A. He farms in southwest Georgia, where many growers don’t even plant soybeans.
In a recent Corteva “Farming the Details” podcast, Harrell and Don Kyle, soybean breeder and evaluation zone leader for the Eastern U.S. with Corteva Agriscience, discuss how elite management and advanced genetics work together to push soybean yields toward their full potential.
Yield is in the details
Harrell thinks about yield potential as a ceiling, not a floor. It is highest at the start of the season, and every management gap chips away at it. Lose a bushel here, 10 there, five somewhere else, and do that 100 times over. A top-performing farm quickly falls to just average. Harrell planted an Enlist E3® soybean variety in 30-inch rows at a population of 110,000 under center-pivot irrigation with double strip-till. He credits the management details below with getting him the higher yields.
1. Planter precision
Planter precision is the one topic nobody brings up when Harrell speaks at grower meetings, yet he considers it the biggest yield limiter on most farms. Soybeans that are not perfectly singulated are a yield penalty. His team spends significant time setting up planters before every season. During planting, Harrell walks behind the planter, rather than operating it — to watch spacing, depth and variety placement.
2. Soil fertility
Harrell starts with base saturation, works through nutrient ratios, then worries about absolute levels last. Balanced nutrient levels outperform high levels that are out of ratio. His program looks closely at micronutrient levels that most operations miss.
3. Weekly tissue samples
Every Monday during the growing season, Harrell pulls tissue samples himself. At harvest, he or his father runs the combine personally, using yield monitor data to spot high and low zones. A high-yielding zone sitting 200 yards from a significantly lower one sends him to the soil probe. He wants to know why. That investigation feeds the next season’s plan.
What Corteva breeders are building toward
Don Kyle has spent more than 30 years breeding soybeans and says that progress over the past decade has made him more excited about the crop than ever.
Breeders start with a large selection of plants and end with a handful of varieties that advance commercially, and end with a handful of commercial varieties, each selected to perform across the full range of environments farmers will face.
Soybean cyst nematode resistance shows how that work has accelerated. SCN quietly robs yield by limiting water and nutrient uptake at seed fill. Corteva breeders identified major SCN resistance genes and now use molecular markers to select for them worldwide in a single step at low cost.
Before molecular markers, the same selection required weeks of greenhouse testing. That technology now extends to maturity genes, other disease traits and, increasingly, yield itself.
Seed size: The next frontier
Harrell credits the current generation of soybeans with a real yield step-up because those varieties naturally produce larger seed.
Average soybean size runs 2,800 to 3,000 seeds per pound. His operation has achieved as low as 1,500. Same plant population, same pod count per plant, but seed weight doubles.
That is the opportunity Kyle sees as most compelling for the next generation of soybean genetics. Molecular marker technology is now advanced enough to start predicting complex traits like yield, and seed size is at the center of that work.
Naturally larger seed on the plant, without requiring the management conditions Harrell uses today to achieve it, is where both farmers and breeders want to see the science go.
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The transgenic soybean event in Enlist E3® soybeans is jointly developed and owned by Corteva Agriscience LLC and M.S. Technologies L.L.C. Enlist Duo® and Enlist One® herbicides with Colex-D® technology are the only herbicides containing 2,4-D that are authorized for preemergence and postemergence use with Enlist® crops. Enlist Duo and Enlist One herbicides are not registered for use or sale in all states and counties; are not registered in AK, CA, CT, HI, ID, MA, ME, MT, NH, NV, OR, RI, UT, VT, WA and WY. Contact your state pesticide regulatory agency if you have questions about the registration status of Enlist® herbicides in your area. ALWAYS READ AND FOLLOW PESTICIDE LABEL DIRECTIONS. ONLY USE FORMULATIONS THAT ARE SPECIFICALLY LABELED FOR SUCH USE IN THE STATE AND COUNTY OF APPLICATION. USE OF PESTICIDE PRODUCTS, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, 2,4-D-CONTAINING PRODUCTS NOT AUTHORIZED FOR USE WITH ENLIST CROPS, MAY RESULT IN OFF-TARGET DAMAGE TO SENSITIVE CROPS/AREAS AND/OR SUSCEPTIBLE PLANTS. Additional product-specific stewardship requirements for Enlist crops, including the Enlist Product Use Guide, can be found at www.traitstewardship.com. © 2026 Corteva. 034070 LC (06/26)
