Many growers have seen a shift from drought conditions to periods of heavy rain and flooding. That shift could lead to increased disease pressure. Blake Miller, an agronomic service representative with Syngenta, talks about how growers can preserve their maximum yield potential despite the challenges. Miller talks about the weather shift in his area.
“The recent rainfall has definitely helped form the disease triangle. We have pockets of strong outbreaks of tar spot, some gray leaf spot, and there’s been some southern rust, which was not necessarily driven by the weather you mentioned, but the ample moisture and the recent temperatures are setting up for the late August, early September epidemic of tar spot.”
He talks about which diseases to keep an eye out for.
“I have an overall concern with the recent financial climate with agriculture, and there was a lot of May-planted corn, that growers will lose sight of the May-planted corn crop, which, if tar spot, usually coming in late August, early September, that crop could be in the yield development stage right, the grain fill stage, about middle of way through, and could really be impacted by tar spot. Tar spot is the one that I’m really focused on now, mostly because of this temperature decline and some things recently have come out of academia that the temperature piece has really become more important, and we’re really riding in that rolling average. That’s the one I’m targeting there. And then I think in the soybean space, frogeye leaf spot is a major concern. It comes in late, affects the top of the plant and the newest tissues, and then you’re going to detract from the photosynthetic factor that can fill the pod. So those are really the two. You could throw a gray leaf spot in there.”
Miller talks about applying a fungicide before signs of disease show in their fields.
“Yes, absolutely, and that’s probably the toughest behavior, if you will, to get across because of an incubation period, which means the plant’s infected, and you don’t see a lesion with tar spot for 21 days. So effectively, it’s hard to get someone to understand because you can’t tangibly see it. The plant’s been sick and distracted from making yield for 21 days, so making a commitment to make the applications at the reproductive stage and protect yield is the absolute right thing to do.”
Miller talks about his fungicide recommendations.
“Yeah, on the corn side, depending on where you’re at and where the listeners are. I’m more in central Illinois, so we don’t have so much southern rust, so we lead with Miravis Neo, powered by our ADEPIDYN® technology. If you’re in the South, where southern rust is more commonly the fight, if you will, you’re probably more in the Trivapro space in the corn. And in the soybeans, we’re central Illinois, we’re more Miravis Neo, Miravis Top, depending on where you’re at and what pathogen you’re really concerned about. So, those are the four products that we tend to lead with depending on the prescriptive basis you need in your field.”
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