A recent verbal survey of North Carolina soybean stakeholders indicated three core areas of interest for applied soybean research that include: using planting date to maximize soybean yield, appropriate maturity group selection based on planting date, and population adjustments across diverse planting dates. This project seeks to provide locally generated data on these priority areas. This research will be conducted across North Carolina (5-6 locations/year) for three years in an effort to ask these research questions under diverse environmental conditions. We will target planting soybeans every two-weeks at each location from mid-March through mid-August. At each planting date, one soybean variety from each soybean maturity group (II-VIII) will be planted. Five populations will be tested within each maturity group at each plating date (75,000, 100,000, 125,000, 150,000, 175,000 seeds/acre). Results will be disseminated to various North Carolina stakeholders at grower meetings, field days, via electronic media, and through extension publications.