Are economic thresholds for IPM decisions the same for low LAI soybean cultivars in Brazil?

BACKGROUND Economic thresholds (ETs) are well‐established for defoliation of soybean, Glycine max, and have been updated for many of the newer cultivars; however, there is increasing grower adoption of cultivars with a reduced leaf area index (LAI). It is of theoretical and practical interest to determine low LAI cultivar tolerance to defoliation. We conducted experiments during two consecutive crop seasons (2017/2018 and 2018/2019) using three soybean cultivars (NS 5959 IPRO, NS 5445 IPRO, and DON MARIO 5.8i) and three defoliation levels (0%, 16.7%, and 33.3%) to evaluate the tolerance of reduced LAI soybean cultivars under different defoliation levels. RESULTS We observed differences among cultivar's LAI during plant development during both years. Soybean LAI was reduced with increasing defoliation intensity. Tested continuous defoliation levels from plant development stages of V2 to R6 reduced the weight of 1000 seeds and yield but did not impact oil or protein content. CONCLUSIONS Despite our findings that current ET for defoliators in soybean (30% defoliation during vegetative stage and 15% defoliation during reproductive stage) are valid, it is important to consider that continuous defoliation injury impacts the capacity of the plant to respond to injury and must be further evaluated for ET refinement in future research. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry The importance of evaluating soybean plant tolerance to defoliation to establish economic threhold (ET) for integrated pest management (IPM) decisions.