Heat wave hits crops during crucial growing period

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The recent upper Midwest heat wave has come at a bad time for soybeans, which are going through a critical part of their growth.

Temperatures in the region have remained above average throughout most of the month of July for most parts of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota.

“Most of our soybeans are flowering or starting to bloom. That’s basically the critical moment for heat stress. It’s the worst moment that we could ask to have heat stress,” said Ana Carcedo, a North Dakota State University Extension agronomist who specializes in broad leaf crops.

Soybeans aren’t the only crop going through crucial growth phases during the hot streak.

Carcedo said about 50% of the state’s corn is already silking, making it a detrimental time for the corn to be carrying the burden of that additional heat. But even more than the heat, she’s concerned about the lack of rainfall.

“The crop is good. Soybeans are looking fairly good,” Carcedo said. “But if we don’t get rain in the coming days, we might be facing some yield penalties. So we still have to wait and see what we get.”

When it comes to heat stress, temperatures are crucial because this is the time period where plants can recover during nightfall. The crops use the night to fix tissue that was damaged due to the excess heat. However, this can only happen if the nighttime temperature stays under 75 degrees.

While some crops are impacted more by the increased heat, North Dakota does have some commodities that can handle the additional temperature. Sunflowers, for example, can handle the heat well and are a more heat-tolerant crop. However, wheat and canola crop are a different story, as Carcedo said they are most vulnerable to heat during their reproductive stages.

Besides the heat, smoke in the air has also been a topic on many people’s minds, but Carcedo is not worried about it impacting the crops in the field.

“I get this question all the time. It’s like, ‘I am seeing that every day is cloudy. It might impact the amount of sunlight that microbe receives.’ It might cause some problems … but actually, it’s not going to be something that we can even quantify. It’s so low that we cannot even put a number to that,” Carcedo said.

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