Farmers are making fungicide application decisions right now for corn. Growmark’s Nathan Kleczewski says this is an interesting year.
Kleczewski; “Because obviously we started out with a lot of heat and drought throughout a lot of the area in Illinois, and then of course the past couple of weeks, we’ve had some rains push through. And a lot of our corn has just started to tassel. So, the biggest question right now is just, do I need to make a fungicide or not? And that itself is kind of a loaded question and it kind of depends on your situation.”
In general, he says, the hot and dry weather really shut down some diseases, such as leaf spot issues, earlier in the season. Kleczewski; “Because of that, they’re really just starting now. And that means that if they do build up with this weather, they’re going to be delayed by a couple of weeks over when we might typically see them in a season. That and you think about diseases like tar spot, that disease really likes it really humid and moderate temperatures, and so it’s not built up to a point where I’m concerned about it really anywhere. And so really, my thought is that a lot of these diseases are probably going to start to show up in most areas, probably a couple of weeks after tassel.”
So, his advice is; “I’ve been telling the people that are just kind of gung-ho, I’m going to spray, this might be a season where spraying a little later in that R-1 – R-3 Window is going to be more beneficial just in terms of protecting the crop. I still think that you have some time to make a decision and you can get out there and start looking at what you think your yield potential is going to be and you can get some idea whether or not you think it’s going to be worthwhile because I do think we have a few extra weeks to make an application and still get maximum benefit out of it this season.”
Story provided by Todd Gleason, WILL, Urbana, Illinois and NAFB News Service