New Crop Disease Tool Helps Farmers Decide on Fungicides

By Blake Jackson

Deciding whether to apply fungicides to crops involves multiple variables crop variety, growth stage, weather conditions, input costs, and market prices all play a role.

To aid in these decisions, farmers now have access to a new online crop disease risk assessment tool developed by the Crop Protection Network. This platform combines models for various crops and diseases into one easy-to-use resource.

To get the most out of this tool, it's recommended to explore the tutorial and features early in the season. The predictions are based on localized weather data, so it’s best to run the tool for each specific field since weather can differ greatly even within a single township.

Understanding your crop’s growth stage is essential when using this model. For example, soybeans at the R5 stage or beyond are less vulnerable to frogeye leaf spot, as the disease primarily affects younger leaves. If the model shows high risk but your crop is already at R6, treatment may be unnecessary.

Historical knowledge of your farm is also key. Certain diseases, like white mold in soybeans, are spread more through soil than air. If your fields have no previous history of infection, a high-risk reading might not be relevant for your location.

The tool also offers additional information about each disease and details the weather data used in its predictions. Users can save reports, which helps track conditions and disease patterns over multiple seasons valuable for long-term farm planning.

As of this week in Pennsylvania, gray leaf spot risk in corn is high, while tar spot risk remains low. Gibberella ear rot risk, which can lead to vomitoxin (DON) issues, is moderate in freshly silking corn in the eastern and northeastern regions.

Soybean white mold risk is currently low but is expected to increase. Frogeye leaf spot risk is rated moderate to high across much of the state.

Although these tools were originally created for the Midwest, researchers are now exploring how well they apply to the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions.

Photo Credit: istock-ligora