vidalia &8212; After a record soybean harvest in 2005, area farmers will be thinking about upping their investment in the crop this season.

With the high price of fertilizer weighing down the return on corn and grain sorghum (milo), Concordia Parish could see its soybean acreage blow past 100,000, County Agent Glen Daniels said.

That should make for a pretty full house at Wednesday&8217;s annual meeting of the Louisiana Soybean Association at the Comfort Suites in Vidalia.

The meeting will feature presentations from members of the Louisiana State University and Mississippi State University agricultural extensions.

Dr. David Lanclos, the soybean, grain and grain sorghum specialist at LSU AgCenter, will talk about the success the center has had with verification programs, in which local producers try new bean varieties, irrigation, fungicides and insecticides to keep ahead of the game.

The verification program operates a sentinel, or test, field at the southern end of Concordia Parish in tandem with Daniels. Weekly monitoring and testing allow the Daniels and the AgCenter to carefully examine and combat any threats that arise.

The 2005 yield for the plot was 62.5 bushels per acre, considerably higher than the state&8217;s record harvest of 35 bushels per acre.

Daniels said they employed two new fungicides and one new insecticide in an effort to combat Asian soybean rust and red-shoulder stink bugs, two dangers to the crop.

Drs. Matt Bauer, Allan Blain, Dan Poston and Boyd Padgett will address the challenges to 2005 production, early soybean production, and fungicide timing in presentations.

The early planting of southern soybeans puts local farmers in a good position to have their beans mature before the spore-based rust can get to them. The rust doesn&8217;t kill the bean; rather, it causes the plant to defoliate, thereby stopping the growth process.

And should anything happen to the Midwest soybean crop, the south&8217;s two percent slice of the national yield suddenly becomes that much more valuable.

But no farmer wants to wish for another&8217;s failure, especially when they could all hope to expand the market. For his part, Daniels hopes the development of alternative uses for soybeans will do just that.

The Ferriday Oil and Seed facility will need a healthy slice of the parish&8217;s yield, and a proposed bio-diesel plant in Alexandria would further drive up demand for the local crop.

&8220;I strongly feel we need to look at value-added uses carefully,&8221; Daniels said. &8220;The greater use of Louisiana soybeans, the greater the opportunity for all.&8221;

The public meeting begins at noon with a catered lunch. People planning to attend are asked to contact Rob Ferguson at (318) 308-4191 or e-mail him at

referguson@agcenter.lsu.edu

.

so the appropriate number of lunches can be prepared.

The LSA will hold its meeting after the program at 3:30 p.m.