Continuing the conversation about what went on in Iowa production agriculture in terms of pests and diseases that may have impacted final yields over and above or outside of the big limiting factor that everybody talks about – water. It certainly provided a large limiting factor in terms of yield levels this year but Troy Bauer, Senior Technical Agronomist at BASF, says it’s far from the only one.
“A couple of different issues that really reared their ugly heads this year would be SCN and SDS. So it means this nematode and sudden Death syndrome, typically in dry years, sudden soybeans. This neighborhood is a little bit bigger issue. And in other years, and we did see that I was able to see in some of my research trials where SCN was kind of narrowing up the canopy and the slowing canopy closure.”
That resistance is certainly not new, and Troy encourages producers to at least get a baseline egg count for your fields, investing the time to know where you’re at in trying to manage that threat going forward. Now he also says they did see quite a bit of soybean Sudden Death Syndrome.
“Even though it was a drier year in many parts of the Midwest actually was a little bit worse this fall than what we expected. So we’re seeing some great results with the ILEVO seed treatment as it’s the proven product that will control and provide protection against both SCN and SDS.”
Which, he notes, it’s important to remember that SDS is as much an injury inflicted at planting time as anything else.
