The weather has been anything but consistent this growing season, between heavy rainfalls and stretches of dry spells. According to Bayer Technical Agronomist Lance Tarochione, these extremes don’t significantly impact the plant, but is does set up conditions for potential diseases:
“Because of the disease potential that we see and also the stress that the crop went through early in the season, good white mold conditions are coming up as well. White mold likes the same weather conditions as tar spot, so I think fungicide management will be important again this year. Hopefully we don’t have southern rust like we did last year, which that is more of a have to wait and see if that develops, but things like white mold and tar spot, there are here every year if we get the right weather conditions at the right time,” says Tarochione.
“We are not that far away from mid-season fungicide applications in corn. It will be good to have a plan in place and scout your fields and anticipate when that crop is going to be at the right growth stage to make that application. You don’t really want to wait until the field is ready to spray to tell your applicators that it is ready, that way people can make a plan and hopefully get those applications on more timely than we do when we don’t make a plan,” Tarochione adds.
Fortunately, Tarochione informs there was not a lot of replanting that occurred, it was mainly just in pockets of isolated fields and more soybeans than corn was replanted locally.
