Germination and emergence of soybean under crusted soil conditions

Summary The fluctuations of ODR, moisture content in the crust and the soil beneath the crust and crust strength during emergence period have been presented. The limiting factors of the seed environment under crusted soil conditions have been described and identified. In the early part of the emergence period ODR and in the later part crust strength were the limiting factors. The emergence characteristics of the 12 soybean varieties of varying seed sizes were analysed in detail. The small seeded varieties (Type-1 and Type-49) were less susceptible to the effects of increasing crust strength and maintained distinct emergence advantage over the large seeded varieties. Since the large seeded varieties confronted the hard crust barriers for a longer period of time, their seedling mortality was more than 50 per cent as compared to around 30 per cent in case of small seeded ones.