Note: the following list includes only brand-new releases for 2025.

BrettYoung

BY NEBO XT is an ultra-early variety with a relative maturity of 000.5 RM or 2150 CHU. This Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean has an attractive phenotype and offers excellent yield performance in early markets. It has a robust defence package, offering very good protection against soybean cyst nematode (SCN) and phytophthora root rot (PRR). BY NEBO XT is also semi-tolerant to iron deficiency chlorosis (IDC).

BY ARVON XT is a Roundup Ready 2 Xtend variety offering a highly competitive yield for its relative maturity of 000.9 RM or 2250 CHU. Featuring very good PRR and white mould tolerance and semi-tolerant rating for IDC, BY ARVON has a solid defence package that provides exceptional performance.

Corteva: Brevant Seeds

B0024EE is an Enlist 3 variety offering good yield for its maturity. It comes with a strong defence package that includes white mould tolerance, strong IDC tolerance and excellent protection against PRR. Relative maturity is 2325 CHU.

B0044EE is a high-yielding Enlist 3 soybean with very good field emergence and harvest standability. This plant has a branchy phenotype, pods up well and provides a great canopy cover. Its defence package includes IDC tolerance and protection against SCN. Relative maturity is 2375 CHU.

B0074EE is a high yielding Enlist 3 variety with good harvest standability and a defence package that includes white mould tolerance and excellent IDC tolerance. This plant pods up well and has nice bean clusters at the top. Relative maturity is 2375 CHU.

Corteva: Pioneer Seed

P003Z08E is a high yielding Enlist 3 variety that performs well across most environments. This soybean offers strong early-season vigour and standability and has an excellent lodging rating as well. P003Z08E also features PRR and white mould tolerance and strong IDC tolerance. Relative maturity is 00.3 RM or 2350 CHU.

P004Z87E is an early Enlist 3 variety that pods up well and has good field emergence. This high yielding soybean has a defence package that includes tolerance to PRR, IDC and white mould. Relative maturity is 00.4 RM or 2375 CHU.

P008Z25E is a high-performance Enlist 3 soybean with excellent yield potential. This variety has a tall plant height and produces a strong canopy cover. P008Z25E also features PRR and white mould tolerance and strong IDC tolerance. Relative maturity is 00.8 RM or 2475 CHU.

P009Z94E is an Enlist 3 variety that is the highest-yielding soybean in the Pioneer brand lineup. It has an excellent disease protection package that includes PRR and SCN tolerance and a strong IDC score. Relative maturity is 00.9 RM or 2500 CHU.

Dekalb

DKB007-91XF is an XtendFlex soybean with high yield potential. This is a medium-tall plant with a medium bushy architecture that provides strong emergence and very good standability. DKB007-91XF is an excellent option for growers concerned about or currently managing Group 4-resistant kochia. Relative maturity is 00.7 RM or 2475 CHU.

NorthStar Genetics

NSC Homewood is a Roundup Ready 2 Xtend variety with excellent yield potential. An excellent replacement for NSC Sperling, NSC Homewood is a tall, semi-bushy soybean with strong emergence and standability that performs well in all soils. It has a very strong disease package, featuring the Rps1c gene for protection against PRR, along with very good white mould tolerance and a tolerant rating for IDC. Relative maturity is 00.6 RM or 2450 CHU.

Proven Seed

PV S007XF55 is an XtendFlex soybean offering significant and stable yield enhancements. This is a uniform, solid plant with a fast canopy closure and a very tall, bushy plant type. PV S007XF55 has good standability and aggressive early growth. It also features outstanding IDC tolerance and SCN resistance and is a good choice for growers in southern Manitoba. Relative maturity is 00.7 RM.

SeCan

Alouette R2X is a Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybean with medium early maturity and an attractive plant type. It has a very good rating for lodging and is rated as semi-tolerant to IDC. This variety shows great yield potential for its early maturity rating. Relative maturity is 00.1 RM or 2325 CHU.

Syngenta: NK Seeds

S0009-J5X is an early Roundup Ready 2 Xtend variety featuring broad adaptability with optimal performance in high-yield environments. S0009-J5X offers the best emergence in the NK Seeds soybean lineup and has excellent standability as well. It has an excellent disease package that includes strong PRR and IDC tolerance and exceptional white mould tolerance. Relative maturity is 0.009 RM or 2275 CHU.

Thunder Seed

TH85003XF is an ExtendFlex variety offering great consistent yields, with strong agronomics, good plant height and productive branches contributing to excellent overall performance. It is broadly adapted for varied conditions across Western Canada and has SCN tolerance and very good PRR, IDC and white mould tolerance. Relative maturity is 00.3 RM.

The post New soybean varieties for 2025 appeared first on Grainews.

Grainews recently spoke with several prominent seed companies about new soybean varieties they have in the development pipeline and the impact shifting weather patterns are having on their developmental efforts.

Weather challenge

Allan Froese is a soybean product placement scientist for Syngenta in Western Canada and helps oversee the company’s efforts to develop new varieties.

Changing weather patterns have always been a challenge when it comes to seed breeding efforts, he says, but those efforts have become even more challenging of late, with drought and large rain events becoming more commonplace.

“That significantly affects how we can understand how our products will perform … and definitely makes for more of a challenge,” he says.

“Something we’ve been focusing on for several years now is finding products that have broad-acre adaptability that can handle stressful conditions. In order to achieve that, we’ve put a large focus on improving the disease tolerance of our varieties. We want to make sure that as the climate changes… we’re bringing products that can deal with those changing environments.”

As a result, Froese says, Syngenta is now conducting more trials across a larger geography, to ensure the company has a better understanding of how a new product will perform in a wider variety of conditions.

In the near term, Syngenta will be offering varieties containing the Enlist E3 and XtendFlex herbicide tolerance traits. The Enlist E3 platform provides tolerance to 2,4-D, glyphosate and glufosinate herbicides while XtendFlex offers dicamba, glyphosate and glufosinate tolerance. Froese says while some companies will only provide one or the other platform, Syngenta is committed to providing growers choice by offering both trait technologies.

Changing climate

Liz Knutson is the Canadian marketing leader for Corteva Agriscience. Knutson says the company has always been focused on conducting extensive localized breeding and testing to deliver varieties that perform across a wide range of geographies and environments. The upside to that, she says, is that with an ever-changing climate, products that were suitable in one region may suddenly be an appropriate fit elsewhere.

“Because we have those localized programs, as we see agronomic challenges shift or as we see climate patterns shift, we may already have products in the arsenal that may be easily moved or transitioned to other footprints,” she says, citing relative maturity as a good example of that.

Knutson says shifting weather patterns also means listening to what farmers have to say about their needs and potential solutions has become more important than ever.

“Our breeders are always looking forward and taking into account those changing environmental and agronomic pressures where we’re growing new varieties. That includes focusing on yield-limiting diseases and any kind of challenges our farmers might face. We want to be responsive to the market, so as we hear those concerns continue to pop up, we do our very best to address them,” says Knutson.

Corteva recently launched Pioneer brand Z-Series soybeans in Canada, a series offering 20 new varieties. It was available in limited quantities for 2024 and will get a full commercial release for 2025. It’s the fifth soybean series in Pioneer’s 50-year history and Knutson says it represents a generational leap in yield potential and superior disease resistance.

As for what the company has in its developmental pipeline, Knutson would only say Corteva’s next round of soybean product launches will be enhancements on products that are already available.

“We’re really honoured every time a farmer chooses a Corteva-branded product. That’s why we continue to put $4 million a day into our R&D pipeline,” she says.

Important efforts

Stephen Denys is director of market and product development for Maizex Seeds, a southwestern Ontario seed company that sells corn and soybean into Western Canada.

Maizex has one of the largest pre-commercial testing programs in the country and every new variety it develops or licenses must go through a rigorous screening process. Denys says those efforts have become even more important as the climate has continued to evolve.

“One of the reasons we do multiple years of testing is to find varieties that are consistent over differing environments and geographies,” he says. “That way we get to see things under a different range of environmental conditions, and you try to commercialize something that’s going to give a consistent performance, whether it’s a drier year or a wet year.”

One of the results of climate change is a corresponding evolution in disease pressure, Denys says.

As a result, testing new products can’t just focus on agronomics but also the disease front, to make sure seed products evolve as the environment evolves, he adds. In Manitoba, for instance, iron chlorosis tolerance is necessity, but testing also covers sclerotinia and other diseases.

In terms of future soybean releases, Maizex is looking to add new Xtend and Enlist varieties with 2,4-D and Liberty tolerance and with early maturity over the next three to four years.

It’s also planning to launch an Xtend HT4 package that would provide tolerances to dicamba, 2,4-D, Liberty, glyphosate and another herbicide all in the same bundle.

Adapting to changes

Nikki Vercaigne is the campaign marketing manager for DeKalb West with Bayer CropScience. She says the company’s priority for developing new soybean varieties is to focus on products with increased yield potential and a strong disease resistance package that are a fit with growers.

Vercaigne says Bayer’s breeding program takes into consideration the impact of climate change on how the company develops those new products.

“We continue to adapt our research protocols and trial locations to adapt to the changing environmental conditions, specifically looking at heat units and rainfall to maximize soybean genetic potential,” she says.

“Our development pipeline also takes into consideration anticipating future agronomic challenges to help ensure we’re supporting future grower needs with soybean varieties that help solve those challenges.”

DeKalb’s newest soybean release is the DKB007-91XF variety which is being launched for the 2025 growing season. It’s a high-yield-potential variety with medium bushy architecture, strong emergence, great standability and the XtendFlex herbicide system that offers glyphosate, dicamba and glufosinate tolerance.

It’s also looking to launch its own HT4 soybean package within the next three to five years. It would be the company’s first soybean trait system to offer tolerance to five different herbicide active ingredients that Vercaigne says would give growers greater application flexibility to help manage resistant or tough to control weeds.

The post Changing weather, changing varieties appeared first on Grainews.

Since the 2017 peak, soybean area has dropped, with western Canadian area at 1.49 million acres this year. That drop since 2017 has been mostly due to challenging growing conditions and strong prices for other crops. Although genetic improvement in soybeans has continued over the past seven years, economic conditions have reduced soybean area.

Most of the increase in soybean area has been driven by the development of suitable varieties for the growing conditions in the northern U.S. and southern Prairies. The improvement in genetics has resulted in the expansion of cropped area. Climate change has also played a role in the soybean acreage expansion.

There have been many studies that have examined the changes to the climate in Western Canada over the past couple of decades. A review of the research on climate change in the agricultural growing regions in Canada was conducted by Mapfumo et al. in the Canadian Journal of Plant Science in 2023. The authors examined the research to date of the parameters that are important to producing crops.

Of the factors examined the in the review, the three most critical parameters for soybean production are growing season precipitation, growing season length and air temperatures during the growing season. The research indicates that changes in all three parameters have occurred over the past 100 years.

Some rain must fall

Every farmer knows precipitation is the critical element for producing crops on the Prairies. The weather during the past two growing seasons certainly proves the point that “rain makes grain.” Research indicates that growing season precipitation has increased since 1900. In Alberta’s agricultural region it has increased by 18 mm over the period beginning in 1900. In another study, Prairie rainfall has increased by 39.2 mm over the growing season in the period from 1956 to 1995.

The increase in precipitation is welcome news for soybean production in the coming years. Soybean yields are generally directly related to the amount of moisture received during the growing season. Rains are very critical during August for soybeans, when the crop is going through its reproductive growth stage. The general increase in growing season precipitation should translate to increased precipitation during August.

Change of season

Growing season length is the second most critical factor in producing crops in Western Canada. This is particularly true for soybeans, which are vulnerable to an early-season frost. Western Canada has seen its growing season increase by between three and 12 days, using data from 1920 to 2020.

Frost dates have also changed in Western Canada with the median spring frost earlier by 11.1 days and the fall frost dates were later by 9.4 days. A longer growing season allows soybeans to expand their footprint in the Prairies.

Growing by degrees

The heat experienced over the past two growing seasons has certainly brought temperatures to the forefront in terms of risk to crops. The maximum air temperatures have been increasing by 2.4 to 3.6 C during the period from 1950 to 2010.

The increase in maximum temperatures is probably the largest concern for soybean production in the future. Although temperatures during the growing season are expected to be higher than current levels, soybean yields are not likely to be significantly impacted by the higher temperatures.

The warmer temperatures are also expected to increase the growing degree days (GDD). GDDs have increased by 95 days in the Prairies over the period between 1948 to 2016. Another study in Alberta indicated GDDs increased by 77.5 (6.2 per cent) during the period from 1901 to 2002. The increase in growing degree days is essential in expanding the soybean area in Western Canada.

In conclusion, climate change is expected to expand the soybean growing area in Western Canada. With the increase in area, soybean production in Western Canada during the coming years. Economic factors will play a large role in determining the extent of the acreage expansion. The drop in soybean area over the past five years has been largely due to deteriorating prices for soybeans relative to competing crops.

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“Probably 25 per cent of the field was impacted,” the production specialist told attendees at a Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization field day near Melita, Man. “One in four plants were dying off, and that was actually in the drought year 2021.”

Phytophthora root rot is a water mould disease and a relative newcomer to Manitoba, affecting both field peas and soybeans. As with other soybean diseases, it’s gained presence in the province as soy acres expand.

The rise of soy

Today, soybeans have a solid foothold in Manitoba’s top three crops, vying with wheat and canola. In late June, Statistics Canada reported about 1.4 million acres were seeded in Manitoba.

Twenty years ago, they were almost non-existent. At the turn of the millennium, soybeans in Manitoba were a novelty crop, taking up less than 50,000 acres. By the middle of that decade, the crop had clawed its way to several hundred thousand acres.

From there, popularity took off. By 2013, it topped one million acres and hit an all-time high in 2017, when farmers planted almost 2.3 million acres.

Behind the crop, though, came diseases and pests. In 2019, Manitoba clocked its first positive soil tests for soybean cyst nematode. In 2021, above-ground symptoms were noted in central Manitoba.

Phytophthora has a longer history in the province. In 2017, as soybean acres reached their peak, samples submitted by MPSG to Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada tested positive for phytophthora in 35 per cent of the 89 fields surveyed that year.

Then came the drought. The industry group found no cases through its monitoring program in 2020 and 2021. In 2022, it found it in 11 per cent of fields.

Spore taste

The disease starts with resting oospores within the soil. When the oospores detect a nearby soybean root, they swim to it through a thin film of soil moisture.

The obvious first sign of a problem is when leaves start to wilt.

“The leaves stay attached to the plant when they’re wilted and you’ll have a brown lesion up from the soil,” Schmidt said. “When you pull those plants, they’ll pull really easily out of the ground because those roots are all rotted.”

Infection has a similar look to northern stem canker, which also causes brown lesions, but the latter attacks the stem rather than the root.

“When you pull that plant (infected with northern stem canker) out of the ground, there will be some resistance,” Schmidt said. “That’s a quick way to tell one from the other.

“But at the end of the day, a lab test at the Manitoba crop diagnostic lab in Winnipeg is going to be the best way to tell them apart.”

The field that sticks in Schmidt’s memory in the Souris area, southwest of Brandon, was infected with both phytophthora and northern stem canker.

The new disease reality

Soy and pulse experts like Schmidt urge producers to be more vigilant against soybean disease. Phytophthora root rot is one pathogen of concern.

“We’re still in a bit of a honeymoon where we’re not facing lot of major soybean diseases.” Schmidt said. “But coming down the pipeline, phytophthora is the one that we do have up here and, having this much moisture, I’d expect to see these symptoms in your soybeans, especially if you’re on tight rotations.”

Manitoba has had good conditions for development of fungal disease. May and June were cold and wet, sparking fears of sclerotinia and blackleg for canola growers, while Manitoba Agriculture noted problems with ergot in cereals.

For phytophthora, MPSG does have recent surveillance initiatives in place, Schmidt noted. Soil testing last year found less than five per cent of fields with symptoms, but “83 per cent of soils had phytophthora in them,” she said.

“Either we weren’t seeing symptoms mostly because it was dry or because major gene resistance and partial resistance was giving us some protection.”

Starting in 2022, the industry group began an assessment program to independently gauge resistance in different soybean varieties.

Built-in defence

There are two types of soybean resistance against phytophthora root. The first is major gene resistance, which largely stops infection at any growth stage in the plant’s life.

“That’s the most common form of resistance and the way it works is complete resistance to phytophthora throughout the growing season,” Schmidt said. “If (varieties) have a major resistance gene versus phytophthora, it will be listed in Seed Manitoba.”

The second type is partial resistance or field tolerance. In this case, plants still get infected but are able to tolerate the infection and keep growing. Symptoms aren’t as severe and can be variety specific.

“We’ve actually developed a soil test where we can sample phytophthora and find, specifically, what pathotypes are living in the soil,” Schmidt said. “We only used to be able to say we know it’s phytophthora.”

Knowing the race in a specific field can help producers choose varieties and better manage the disease, she noted, as well as informing development of new resistant soybean varieties and new approaches to management.

In 2016, four races of phytophthora were identified, according to the MPSG website. Ensuing years saw the dominant race shift and, in 2018, a new one was detected.

“We expect more PRR (phytophthora root rot) races and pathotypes to be identified over time, as is the case in Ontario and the U.S. where soybeans have a longer history,” the MPSG website states.

“Race-specific resistance is still a beneficial management tool, but partial resistance will become more important over time to combat numerous PRR races.”

Last year, the association surveyed 70 soybean fields and sent soil samples to a Quebec lab for analysis.

The post Phytophthora’s Prairie evolution appeared first on Grainews.

It’s far beyond dispute that Earth’s climate is changing — in part due to natural factors over time such as changes in the sun’s radiation and the occasional volcano, but mainly due to what we, the people, have done and continue to do, coughing out gases that warm the planet at rates exceeding our capacity to adapt and protect ourselves accordingly.

It’s also clear that while disasters such as wildfire, floods, drought, storms and heat waves have always been around, climate change has exacerbated those — both in frequency and intensity. And when people lose homes, businesses and more, as has happened in recent months and years in Jasper, Fort McMurray, B.C.’s Fraser Valley, the Maritime provinces and elsewhere in Canada and worldwide, I wouldn’t want to be the one on Facebook claiming it’s all a hoax and these tragedies would have happened there sooner or later anyway.

What’s more, I’m definitely not going to be the one getting in those people’s faces saying, “But hey, soon we’ll have clear sailing through the Northwest Passage.”

Or, “But hey, just think how much farther north and west we can grow soybeans.”

When we talk about climate change in the pages ahead, we’re talking about adaptation. That is, not every part of the world that already produces soybeans will be able to do so indefinitely. So if we — now, or someday soon — can reliably grow them across the Prairies and the crop is deemed of sufficient food, feed and industrial market value to fairly compensate growers for the effort, then it’s worth considering.

A key word there, of course, is “reliably.” As you’ll see in these pages, seed developers now want to improve the adaptability of their varieties as the conditions for ideal production ebb and flow, and are expanding their testing range for those varieties, to get a clearer picture of performance under those varying conditions and disease pressures.

Opportunities here in the West aren’t lost on these companies, either. It’s now not unheard of for a variety that underperformed in trials in Ontario and Quebec to find new life in markets across Manitoba and points west, if that variety’s maturity is sufficiently early.

If the time and money spent developing new varieties are now more likely to produce a return on investment, and to save work and germplasm otherwise headed for the scrap heap, that’s certainly good news.

Just don’t call it the bright side.

The post Editor’s Rant: Seeds, saved appeared first on Grainews.

While there’s already been a lot of work done on the matters of volunteer canola issues and canola harvest loss, recent research from the University of Manitoba aims to get a better handle on the problem of volunteer canola in soybeans.

Rob Gulden, a U of M researcher and acting associate head of the plant science department, says many variables affect canola harvest loss rates — and they’re tough to isolate.

There are mechanical factors, including combine speed, settings and separator type. Your chosen canola variety will also affect the amount of pod shatter.

Gulden has found harvest losses average about 5.9 per cent, but due to the higher yields of modern canola cultivars, those numbers can rise significantly and contribute more to the volunteer canola seed bank.

Combine settings play a big role in harvest loss, but manufacturer and type of combine (rotary or conventional) are less important.

Laura Schmidt, a production specialist with Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers, said limiting canola harvest loss is “step one.”

That means “just keeping the seeds in the pods longer so we can actually harvest them,” she said. “Make sure that you harvest as much of that crop as possible.”

In the short-term, that won’t stop canola seed already under the surface. The oilseed is resilient when it comes to dormancy, Schmidt noted.

Improving management now won’t necessarily stop future flushes. Canola is grown so frequently across the Prairies that the soil seed bank is constantly being restocked.

Light soil disturbance in fall, such as with a harrow, can limit the problem.

“It actually encourages a lot of those seeds to germinate in the fall, and then they won’t persist and they won’t become part of the seed bank,” Gulden said.

Chemical control

There can be significant crossover between the herbicide resistance profile of canola and that of soybeans if the producer isn’t careful about varieties. Doubling up Roundup Ready systems, for example, takes glyphosate off the table for control.

If there is no good herbicide option, canola is a highly competitive plant that holds its own against soybeans.

In 2017, Gulden and the Manitoba Pulse and Soybean Growers partnered to explore herbicide options against volunteer canola in Xtend soybeans.

Faster-acting modes of action were more effective at preventing soybean yield loss, especially under high volunteer canola pressure, the study found.

A variety of herbicides with different modes of action proved effective for in-crop management of volunteer canola in soybeans.

“Certainly, there are herbicides that can be used in crops or additional herbicides to manage volunteer canola within the soybean crop,” Gulden said.

Maximize density

Cultural control also plays a part in tamping down yield losses, Gulden said. Narrow rows work well.

“We’ve shown that making sure that we have good soybean plant stand density — 180,000 plants per acre or more — really reduces the need for herbicide to control wheat (and) volunteer canola,” he said.

Inter-row tillage can remove interval plants but does nothing to get rid of canola in the row.

In most cases, yield loss from volunteer canola is a manageable problem when the right tools are used, Gulden and Schmidt said.

The post How to keep last year’s canola out of your beans appeared first on Grainews.

Soy Canada executive director Brian Innes tells growers from across the country that they should relish the options that lie before them.

“Where do we want to go from here? The choice is ours,” he said repeatedly, almost as a mantra, as he detailed the forks during Soy Canada’s recent annual meeting in a tent on a western Manitoba farm.

Innes said choices include the introduction of gene-editing technology, the challenges of Canadian soy’s lower-protein beans, the opportunities in the food-grade market and the need to have both a strong voice for soy as well as work with other commodities.

Canada’s unusual soybean production breakdown — about 25 per cent is non-genetically modified and much goes to the human food market — means the industry fears the benefits of gene-editing in breeding will come to this country slower than elsewhere, but Canada has advantages that compensate.

“Canada is better able to serve our customers who want the benefits of this tech with our world-class identity-preserved system and our ability to maintain confidence across a variety of crops,” Innes says.

Canadian farmers grumble about the discounting that hits their soybean crops because of a history of low protein levels compared to other exporters’ crops, but there are a number of ways that can be addressed, he says.

The industry can better explain Canadian soy’s unique protein composition and other elements. It can also use breeding to close the gaps.

“More consistent varieties that deliver more stable and high-quality beans to our customers and farmers is possible,” Innes says.

Canadian food-grade soybean producers and marketers also have choices to make about whether to focus on boosting the performance of individual companies or expand the share of the international marketplace for food-grade soy that Canada could own.

Soy Canada is only 10 years old, formed when the industry realized it had grown to the point where it needed to be treated independently of the pulse and special crops organizations in which it had traditionally resided.

While the crop is not large compared to canola and wheat, it is important in Ontario and Quebec and has recently become Manitoba’s third-most important crop. Farmers in Saskatchewan have been keen to get into soybeans, but today’s varieties are still a bit too fragile and long-seasoned to handle high Prairie conditions well enough for acreage to explode.

If variety development keeps adding toughness and shortening days to maturity, many expect to see western acres surge.

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