Treat Your Soybean Seed?

I read an article today about soybean seed treatment.  Soybean seed treatment has been encouraged by seed dealer, but some are still skeptical.  The article in Prairie Farmer said that Purdue University researchers have 11 years of yield data that show about a one bushel increase in yield for treated seed.  They point out that the yield increase will pay for the treatment.  It would be nice to do better than that, but it may be one of those things where the insurance may not help every year, but in the year that is is needed it could pay off well.

I have an anecdote from a customer who had a field where soybean yield were over 10 bushels per acre different from one side of the field to the other.  He thought on the issue for a long time to figure out what caused the difference.  His conclusion was that the better soybeans had seed treatment that the rest of the field did not get.  It was a poorly drained field where water stood for a week after planting.  Seed treatment results seem to show an advantage in poorly drained soils.