A personal challenge is just that: personal. There's no one looking over the fence and over your shoulder if you try something different on your land. There are no test plot signs along the road.

A personal challenge is what more than 1,100 farmers are taking this year in the High Yield Team project.

In the program, soybean farmers are invited to join the High Yield Team and challenge themselves to boost yields in problem fields. The idea was hatched from the fact that many growers have seen yields of the "miracle crop" hit a plateau - or decline - in recent years for a variety of reasons, including pests, disease, and adverse weather.

Growers participating in the High Yield Team project have enrolled more than 100,000 acres in the program. Historical yields on these fields are 47 bushels per acre on average. The personal goal of the growers is to raise yields by about 30% - to 61 bushels an acre on average.

For their participation, High Yield Team members will receive special reports from an expert panel, an e-mail newsletter, as well as other benefits.

Variety selection is one area where team members are seeking improvement. "The major change for beans this year is selection of varieties that yield well in our microclimate and management based on our own test plot and field performance in the past two years," says Tom Culp, Lexington, Ohio. "Granted, this runs against the rule to select from varieties that do well across a wide area, but those varieties don't always work for us."

His personal challenge is to boost yields to 75 bushels per acre on a 30-acre field averaging 31.4 bushels.

Culp already has an intensive soybean production system in place on his farm. That system includes an optimal fertility program, early preplant residual chemicals, seed-applied fungicides on early planted varieties, inoculation, and crop scouting and treatment as needed.

Other growers on the High Yield Team also are giving special attention to variety selection for several reasons.

Wallace Green, New Boston, Illinois, says, "We have spent quite a bit of time studying varieties, and we are being very selective in our selection of varieties, two of which we'll plant in the selected field. SDS (sudden death syndrome) has been a problem in this field."

High Yield Team expert panel members agree that variety selection is a major issue in breaking through soybean yield barriers.

Variety selection can make a major difference whether you harvest 45- or 60-bushel-an-acre beans, says Palle Pedersen, Iowa State University Extension agronomist. In Iowa, soybean cyst nematode (SCN) is a major pest that can slice up to 30% off soybean yields. The good news is farmers can protect yields by selecting top-notch resistant varieties for SCN-infested fields.