Soybean production in northwestern Argentina, evolution and current state

DEVANI, M.R.; PEREZ, D.R.; LEDESMA, F.; PLOPER, L.D.

Beijing, China

Conferencia; World Soybean Research Conference VIII (WSRC VIII); 2009

Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

The Northwestern Argentina (NWA) is located between 22º and 29º Latitude South and 63º and 68º Longitude West, across the provinces of Tucuman, Salta, Jujuy, Santiago and Catamarca.  The soybean cropping area covers 1.648.970 ha, with an annual production of about 4.036.710 tn with an average yield of 2.750 kg/ha.  This is the result of research work, and the incorporation of new growers and technologies during the last 15 years.  As a consequence, the soybean production, cropping area and average yields have increased at average annual rates of 14%, 10% and 2,9% respectively. The soybean production system in NWA has experienced substantial changes.  These transformations cover almost all the crop aspects: crop systems, maturity group, varieties, distances among arrays, nutrition, watering, control of overgrowths, seed production, etc. Currently, more than 97% of the cropping area is under no-tillage system and transgenic cultivars.  However, increasing the rotation levels is still the challenge.  In the last decade there has been continuous replacement of soybean cultivars and changes in maturity groups? distribution.  No-tillage and use of short groups, changed the row spacing increasing the population density, and changed the pests, weeds, and diseases.  The most important pests are, cutting worms, caterpillars, and bugs.  The main diseases are sudden death syndrome, charcoal rot, frogeye leaf spot, and late season fungal complex, including Asian soybean rust.  Resistant weeds like sorghum is a new problem. In this work the evolution and the current state of the production of soybean in NWA was analyzed, considering different aspects.