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Industry Information >>Agriculture>>Spraying fungicides on corn wasn't a common practice

Spraying fungicides on corn wasn't a common practice

The best answer so far seems to be that odds of getting a returnare best in years with heavy disease pressure and then only oncertain hybrids. But even then, the decision of whether to spray ornot is complicated, at least if you're trying to decide if thosedollars will really be a good investment or not.

Here's this year's scenario, illustrating why the call can be atough one. "The main disease problem we've seen, at least incentral and north-central Indiana, is common rust," says BenGrimme, team sales leader for Beck's Hybrids, Atlanta, Ind.Normally, common rust only appears in significant quantity incommercial corn once or twice in a decade. It may show up morefrequently in southwest Indiana. Sometimes growers there also dealwith southern rust, although it isn't a problem that far northevery season.

Don't be misled- rust is often a problem on seed fields. It may besevere enough to justify spraying. But it's just rarely bad enougho trip the threshold for spraying commercial corn, simply for therust alone.

"What it can do though is set up corn for stalk rot," says KevinCavanaugh, Beck's research director. "Stalk rot could causesignificant yield damage if it causes enough lodging to increaseharvest losses."

That means just writing off common rust in corn might not have beenthe best move out of hand, he notes. Instead, you needed to askmore questions. "That's where it gets tricky," Cavanugh says. "Somehybrids susceptible to rust are very resistant to stalk rots. So itstill might not have paid to spray just for that reason."

However, there are hybrids that might exhibit common rust, but thatalso might be susceptible to one or more potentially serious stalkrots. That's when the appearance of significant rust in commercialcorn fields might have led to justified decisions to spray afungicide, he adds.

Earlier in the season, it appeared like this might be a bad foliardisease year. But what's missing to date is the heat. This seasonis unfolding as a cool, wetter-than-normal one over much ofIndiana. In some ways it resembles 1992, when it was cool and wet,and yields were very high, but corn came out of the field very wet.In other ways it resembles 1981, when a wet spring delayedplanting, and corn was again very wet at harvest. Yields wereaverage, more or less. Spraying fungicides on corn wasn't a commonpractice then, so there's no data base to compare back to see howdecisions to spray or not to spray might have played out in yearswith somewhat similar weather patterns to this season. Neither ofthose seasons featured huge floods, like those that occurred thisyear. That was the 1993 season, but it was confined to the westernCorn Belt. Big floods didn't hamper Indiana farmers that year.

Put all that together and what you have is that 2008 will go downas a unique season. A few farmers who have gotten just the rightamount of rain, and who got rain this past two weeks when cropsstarted to need it, will remember this as a good year. Others willlikely put it down as a year to forget, at least in terms ofweather and growing crops.

 


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