WEST LAFAYETTE — Farmers are facing pressure from sales representatives to place their seed orders earlier each year, but the problem with this is that the current year's yield trial information is not yet available, a Purdue University expert said.

"Ten to 15 years ago, it was common for seed orders to be placed in January or February," Bob Nielsen, Purdue Extension corn specialist, said. "Now orders are being placed in August and September."

Nielsen stressed the importance for growers to take the time to do their homework.

"Seed selection is important and should not be based on advertising or a sales pitch, but on yield performance," Nielsen said. "I encourage folks to not be afraid to use the prior year's yield trial information and look for hybrids that performed well because it really comes down to consistency of hybrid performance."

Many new hybrids come out each year, but growers should be cautious about planting a large amount of acreage to a new hybrid unless they can document its superior performance with data from multiple locations, Nielsen said.

"Growers really need to look at yield performance and identify hybrids that perform well across a broad range of conditions, primarily weather conditions," he said. "It's differences in weather that really impact a hybrid performance.

"Hybrids vary on how they respond to growing conditions, and sometimes a hybrid will perform very well when the conditions are exceptionally good, but when put under stress they fall apart. We don't know what next year's weather will be, but we do know we want a hybrid that will perform well."

Hybrids that consistently yield in the upper 10 percent to 15 percent across numerous variety trials are indicative of consistent performers, Nielsen said.

"When selecting next year's seed, you need trial information from many locations to represent the different weather patterns," he said. "If you find hybrids that perform well across the majority of those locations, it will probably perform well for you next year."

Nielsen warns growers choosing a new hybrid to tread cautiously until it has a proven track record.

"It's important to find summaries that are complete and give a wide range of testing locations to look at performance," he said.

Nielsen realizes data are not always presented in a way that makes it easy to determine hybrid consistency, but emphasizes the need to go through and critically read the information.

Growers can obtain information about hybrid performance from land-grant universities, which can be found on the Web or by contacting the local Extension office. Purdue's Crop Performance Program information is available at http://www.agry.purdue.edu/pcpp/. Variety trials also are run by seed companies as well as by third-party testing services.