July 1, 2025 • 47 mins
We’re back in the field with Nate Quam, BASF Technical Service Representative for Western Iowa and Eastern Nebraska, to talk all things crop protection. From slow-starting soybeans to early tar spot pressure in corn, this episode dives into the threats growers are seeing—and the tools and timing to manage them.
Key Takeaways:
- Start with strong seed selection: Disease-tolerant corn hybrids and soybean varieties are foundational to managing in-season threats.
- Fungicide ROI is strong: Even in low-pressure years, fungicide applications tend to break even if not deliver a yield boost.
- White mold and tar spot are here to stay: These persistent diseases require consistent, key management practices once you have it.
- Soybean gall midge and SCN need close attention: Gall midge showing to be a growing concern while SCN remains a focus for BASF; research and monitoring are critical.
- Mother Nature’s curveballs never stop: Stay adaptable, be diligent, understand what's going on in your fields and use what you learn to guide protection strategies in real time.
Disclaimer:
Liberty, Outlook , Zidua, Zidua PRO , Poncho Votivo Precise, Endura , Revytek, Fastac CS, ILEVO , Vault IP Plus , Relenya , Priaxor , Liberty ULTRA , are registered trademarks of BASF. Nemasphere, Zorina and Voraxor are trademarks of BASF. Enlist, Enlist One, Enlist Duo, and Enlist E3 are registered trademarks of Corteva Agriscience LLC. The transgenic event in Enlist E3 soybeans is jointly developed and owned by Corteva Agriscience LLC and M.S. Technologies, L.L.C.
Xitavo is a registered trademark of MS Technologies and exclusively distributed by BASF. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners and use of any such trademark does not imply any affiliation with or endorsement by its owner.
Always read and follow label directions. Before mixing components, always conduct a compatibility jar test. Always consult respective product labels for specific mixing instructions. The most restrictive label applies. Fastac CS is a restricted use pesticide. Nemasphere, Zorina, and Voraxor are not registered and not available for sale. This information is provided for educational purposes only and is not intended to promote the sale of this product. Any sale of this product after registration is obtained shall be based solely on the EPA approved product label, and any claims regarding product safety and efficacy shall be addressed solely by the label. The views expressed by BASF employees and Guest are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of BASF. Grow Smart is a registered trademark of BASF. Copyright 2025 BASF Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Spilling the Beans, the podcast that
spills the secrets to unlockingyour soybean farm's full
potential.
Every Tuesday, your hosts, billBackus and Jeff Mueller, dive
into expert strategies andinnovative solutions that will
help you boost your yields andmaximize your returns.
Whether you're a seasonedgrower or new to soybean farming
, we're here to help you succeed.
Let's get started.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Spilling the
Beans.
I'm Jeff Mueller.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
And I'm Bill Beckes.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And thanks again for joining us as we dive into the
world of soybeans, coveringvarious topics and providing
insights to the soybean industry.
Bill, good to see you again.
How you been doing.
We've been beating it prettyhard here for the month of June.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
So how's things going in your neck of the woods?
Yeah, been fast and furious.
Just a lot of productevaluation, a lot of product
trainings, trying to dodge thewind and the heat and stay cool.
Got here locally we had CollegeWorld Series going on on, so
(01:10):
that just ended up here recently.
So all all uh, lots of thingsgoing on in june and you know, a
lot of crops continue to growand really just continue to look
.
Look pretty good for the mostpart, but got some questions.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So yeah, yeah, no, that you're.
You're spot on um, yes and umfor all intents and purposes.
I did want coastal carolina towin over lsu but it happened
through that.
You know, one of the things youmade comment on there heat and
some wind.
You know we've just wentthrough a weekend here where we
had three, four days of tripledigits and 30 and 40 mile an
(01:34):
hour winds out of the South andyou know we've had some moisture
but we've been getting somemoisture.
So we've got the heat now we'vegot the moisture and, man,
things are taking off.
I've had quite a few calls,individuals talking about
cultivating corn or sidedressing and they're breaking it
off or it's like it grew.
You know it was waist heightlast week and now it's shoulder
height.
You know it's just going sofast, so it's ready to go.
(01:54):
But you know we've noticed insome cases, you know the corn's
taking a little longer to go andit's finally taken off.
But we've also noticed in thesoybeans some of them seem to be
a little bit behind or maybethey're not coming as fast as we
anticipate.
And I know every year we'realways like man are they ever
going to grow?
Are they ever going to get tocanopy.
And then they get there.
But you know you've beennoticing some things over there
(02:15):
in your neck of the woods.
You know kind of.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
You know, we always like to dive into this story
time kind of seeing, or what doyou got some thoughts on there,
bill?
Yeah, yeah, thanks, jeff, it'sdefinitely been an interesting
spring, you know.
But you know, I think the onethat jumps out the most is as I
travel the you know my area, thestate of Iowa, here, and you
get into looking at a lot ofdifferent environments and from
(02:37):
the west to the east it'sdefinitely drier in the west and
you got more moisture in theeast and that's really where
we're kind of at from myperspective, and and really just
looking at a lot of soybeanfields and you know, had I got
some that are planted on theexact same day and they're, uh,
you know, an hour drive apartand they are three different
stages, if you will.
(02:58):
So I've got some that are onlyat v2, v3, that they're planted
forever.
They're just sitting there,it's kind of stuck.
And then, and then I've gotsummer V6, v7, v8, and R1
already.
So I was cruising down the roadthe other day and talked to our
guest, so we'll go ahead andbring him in.
I was talking to Nate Quam hereon kind of what his thoughts
were as well.
We had a pretty good banterthere.
(03:18):
So, nate, welcome.
Good discussion we had theother day.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
So how are you?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
by the way, I'm good, good to be with you guys.
Thanks for joining us, yeah,thanks, thanks again for your
time.
So so we were, we were talking,we were just trying to come up
with some ideas and you know, wekind of cover some similar
areas and, and you know, nateworked with Jeff and, and both I
and Jeff and you know we'relooking at Was it the?
Was it the smoke from Canadacoming down?
You know, was it just just?
(03:49):
You know what was it?
So, nate, you did a littledigging.
Can you share a little bitabout what you found there?
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, I got on Iowa State's Mesonet website and
looked at soil temperature thisyear versus the last five years
for you know whatever day wetalked, bill, last week, and we
are a little cooler, so there'sdefinitely a component there.
Other things I'm seeing I'm onthe crop protection side of
things with BASF A lot of callson beans that are reacting to
(04:17):
herbicide applications right, sowith the slow development, thin
cuticles.
So when you use an adjuvant orEC, herbicides can act as an oil
.
We're seeing some responsesthere.
So that's also, uh, related tothe slow development we're
seeing this year yeah you know,yeah, so definitely interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
So you know you've been on here before.
You know we didn't take thetime to introduce you, but you
know tech service rep coveringwestern western iowa, eastern
nebraska, for us and been doingthis a long time and I was
really thinking into.
You know what is it.
And you know the soybeans Imean the heat that we've had
over the past.
You know, week here they'vestarted growing again but boy,
(04:56):
they were just stuck and that'sjust really getting a lot of
weird calls on that.
So, jeff, what are you seeingout there on development?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, you know we were drier and warmer to begin
with.
You know, up until about themid-May we were, you know,
almost historically dryconditions, so our beans
actually came along pretty good.
But then when we startedgetting those rains the last
part of May, you know it slowedthings down.
From that standpoint, the onething I would like to ask you
guys also is you know we do alot of strip till, we do a lot
(05:24):
of no-till, we don't do a wholelot of full tillage on our
fields.
Did you notice anythingdifferent versus a stripped,
versus a just slotting it into ano-till?
Because over here I noticedwhere it opened it up more.
We had bare soil.
You know the beans are biggerand more aggressive than in the
type of no-till and I think werun into that every year.
(05:45):
It just stays cooler.
It just yeah, it just takesmore time coming through.
Are you seeing some of those orsome of those?
Related is what kind ofthinking?
Also.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Absolutely.
And that's one of the thingsthat Nate and I talked about as
well was some tillage.
And you know I got a couple offarms that I do different trials
on.
And you know I got a couple offarms that I do different trials
on and one of them ironicallyhas no till, has corn stalks or
beans going into, you know, notilled in corn stalks, and then
I've got beans into tilledground following I think it was
(06:19):
oats stubble where they actuallytilled that.
And then there's across thesame strip there's some corn
stalks in there as well.
So you actually can see, fromstarting the east, going to the
west, these plants are, the rowsare going east west.
You can see the difference inhow much different they are.
But the other thing they hadgoing for them is they had more
rain over there too.
I mean, there's, there's thatfactor in there as well.
(06:42):
There's also and again that'swhat had me really scratching my
head was, you know there's alsoabout a line of where we had
that Canadian smoke coming down.
It wasn't quite as bad to theeast and it was a little worse
to the west.
So you know, beans, as we'vetalked in our G by E by M, yield
triangle.
We've talked about solarradiation, we've talked about
their light harvesters andthat's a big part of it.
And I think to your point, jeff, on the full width tail aid
(07:04):
versus strip tail versus no tail.
There's definitely some thingsas you guys got.
You know, we have differentfarmers who have different
settings on their no tailequipment.
You have the true no tailerswho are barely moving any, any
of the residue.
You have some of them that arejust, you know, putting it out
there and you know, move on toresidue to get it black and
almost.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, so, nate, I'll ask you well, but but, uh, yeah,
go ahead, I'll ask you thisquestion.
Um, and bill, add in on to ittoo.
I've also noticed the earlierplanted beans seem to not have
slowed down, have had moreconsistent growth than some of
the later planted beans too.
And I think you make the pointon that earlier planted we had
better conditions, we didn'tsmoke, we had a lot of those
things that could take off andgo.
(07:49):
Once we got to about that midMay, you know, 10th of May on,
you know it had some otherchallenges I had to work with.
So I think again, anotheradvantage to maybe having some
of that early planted beans toois we're seeing some.
I having some of that earlyplanted beans too, is we're
(08:10):
seeing some.
I've got early planted beans up, you know april 15th, I, I'm
not kidding you.
I think they're going to beclose to canopy here by fourth
of july and then I'm close tomay stuff that I hope it's
canopied by the middle of augustbecause it's, you know, so far
behind.
So just it, just make adifference timing, I agree.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Um, you know I'm seeing similar things.
We had a real nice window therein April before we got the.
We needed the moisture, Don'tget me wrong.
We needed that moisture.
We got in May but we alsocooled down and we did not
accumulate GDU.
So those beans that werealready up and going I agree
probably have a leg up on thoselater planted beans that had to
(08:42):
fight through those coldconditions to emerge.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, no, that's great.
So so we know we're we alwaysevery year, so we go into this
and you know every year isdifferent, right?
You know I always heareverybody say I can't wait for a
normal year or we don't havenormal years anymore.
It changes all the time.
But you know, every year wedeal with some type of insects
or maybe some type of disease,whether it's corn, whether it's
bean.
One year is different from thenext.
But you know, we've been hearinga little bit and, bill, I'm
(09:07):
going to address this out to youbecause I know you really were
at the epicenter of where thiscame into but you know we've
been hearing some conversationsout there the last couple of
three weeks about a pest calledsoybean garbage and we've been
seeing it in soybeans and a lotof people.
You know, let's be honest, it'snew.
A lot of people don't reallyknow much about it.
So can you give us a little bitof information on that kind of
(09:30):
what you're seeing and what aresome management practices we can
look at going forward if weneed to manage soybean gall
midge?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, I'll jump in there and get us started here.
So gall midge I mean you getinto.
I forget the year I should havelooked it up, but 20, let's say
2018, 2019, I forget what yearit was, but Galtmidge, you know,
one of those first places Ifound in Iowa would have been in
Cass County, which which, forme, I'm in Pottawatomie County,
but it was only about 10 milesstraight east of me is where it
(09:59):
was found and you know, firstyear out actually, when I had a
cooperator over there, weactually did some trials and
started looking at some varietalresponses.
We did find that there are somesome unique things.
So that's one idea would be avarietal response and management
.
There's more to follow there.
University of Nebraska does alot of work on this already and
(10:20):
definitely literally digginginto it right and looking at a
lot of different things thatthey're doing.
But you know, one of the mainavenues that they found would be
some cultivation, if you will,throwing some soil up against
the base where the midgeactually lays some small fly
laser eggs in the fissures ofthe stem, basically the base,
and then the eggs hatch and theygrow into call it a maggot
(10:43):
basically, if you will.
That's basically themicroscopic worm.
That's basically kind ofcruising around there and
chewing on the the base of thatstem and and eventually gets
brittle and falls over.
So so that's that's, you know,a couple of quick things.
So, nate, how about you?
What are you seeing?
Speaker 4 (10:57):
we we've, uh, we see a lot of this and you get a lot
of stuff from the cropprotection side, anything there
that we can use yeah, so so wehave had our first reports of
adults emerging, so so onepractice that people have been
trying to do, so there's theybelieve there's three
generations, so that's the trick.
So it's all about timing.
Uh is applying a uh foiler,insecticide pyrethroids,
(11:19):
typically uh to try and killthose adults.
So they they will come fromlast year's soybean fields and
they're very weak flyers, sothey will come from last year's
soybean fields and they're veryweak flyers, so they will
typically fly into the edges ofa soybean field, although we
have had cases where they'vegotten further in the last
couple years.
But the idea is about when yourbeans are susceptible right,
they got to be V2 before thosefissures start to develop.
(11:42):
If you're got, you know ifyou're next to a bean field
where you've had a history oftrouble, or in a bean field
where you've had them when yourbeans hit V2, there is a Golmage
network where you can sign upto get notified for when they're
being found in your area.
You can try and you know timean insecticide application.
You probably don't need to dothe whole field Lots of times,
(12:06):
maybe just the outside 120 feet,um, but the trick is timing and
, like I said, uh, they believethere may be as many as three um
emergencies of these adults.
Uh, starting about now, uh,through july, I believe it goes.
So so that's another practice.
Um, there are some soilinsecticides that have a little
bit of movement in in the plant.
There's two e-labels out therefor some of those really old
(12:26):
products.
Again, I've looked at the dataon those and it's kind of
inconclusive how effective theyare.
Maybe effective for that firstemergence, but obviously as time
goes on it's going to lose it.
The insecticides lose itseffectiveness.
So you're probably not going to, you know, kill the ones that
come in all that thirdgeneration.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great comment.
So I would ask this.
So if I'm a producer, I'm outthere.
Of course I don't have it overhere yet in in western Nebraska,
but it is, you know, along theMissouri River, you know kind of
.
So two things First of all,seed treatment.
So two things First of all,seed treatment.
Is that going to take care ofmy soybean gall midge?
(13:07):
And secondly is how do younotice when you have them out in
the fields?
What do you see?
What's the damage you observe?
A lot of times we'll get thecall oh, just driving down the
road, what's going on with mybeans, or whatever.
That's probably how a lot ofthem see it too.
Right, what do you see?
What's some of that damage yousee, and how would you
(13:27):
investigate?
Speaker 4 (13:28):
it to see if that's what you had.
So typically what people startto see is plants, you know later
in the season, plants in theheadlands, the edges of fields,
a dead plant here and there.
So if you go and investigatethose plants and you split the
stem, you'll see those maggotsin there.
They go through three end stars.
Initially they're going to bealmost translucent and then, as
(13:53):
they go through the next endstar turn kind of white and then
the final one, they turn brightorange.
And I remember I was in WesternIowa about the same time.
Bill was talking about in a in aco-op in the office, and the
guy throws a soybean stem at meand says what the heck are these
?
And I'm like I don't know whatthose are.
I mean they're just a crazylooking orange, little little
grub.
Um, but that's how you know youhave them.
(14:14):
Uh is when you, when you startseeing them and and like bill
said, you know they feed on thatvascular tissue which cuts off
that flow of water nutrients tothe plant and they kill the
plant ultimately so yeah, yeahand then yeah, that's one thing
I like to do is when you'redigging them and you look for
them, you know, we just verylightly pull that that stem.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Uh, uh, the, the coating on the stem.
If you have the skin basicallyaround, look at that vascular
test you underneath there.
They're just right barelyunderneath it and they're.
They're sometimes hard to findbut you can kind of see and you
kind of see those fissures andthey kind of get a, a gall, if
you know what, that's why theycall them a gall midge.
They get that gall, basicallygrowth on the base of that stem
there.
So, um, you know, if you thinkabout a tree and a gall on a
(14:58):
tree, it's the same same term,if you will.
Um, but, uh, you know, thinkingabout that and what they do.
So a lot of research going on.
Hats off to all the universityextension personnel out there,
tons of entomologists trying tofigure this thing out.
They're doing a lot of research.
So more to follow.
So definitely, as Nate said,you know, hop on that gall midge
network.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So yeah, no, no Great .
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, jeff, go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, jeff.
Yeah, no, and then I did seeyou shaking your head on seed
treatments.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
You know, no, yeah, sorry, uh, as a later, you know
as a later pest past v2.
Obviously our seed treatmentsonly last for so long, right?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
so unfortunately that's not an option no, no,
that's great, which actuallykind of leads me into my next
question.
So you know we've always talkedabout, you know, seed treatment
, how it's valuable, especiallyhaving a levo out there for some
of the stuff.
You know there's going to beanother pest we're going to be
finding here pretty soon, maybealready out there, bill.
It's called cyst nematode,soybean cyst nematode.
(15:57):
You know what are you seeingout there right now, what can we
be looking for, and you knowwhat's the value of seed
treatments with soybean cystnematodes that we have going out
there and that's something,yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
All good questions, jeff.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, all good questions.
So, yeah, so, really, right nowagain, we we've been talking,
you know.
Number one it's time.
It's time for those soybeancyst nematode to be hatching and
the nematodes are starting tofeed and females will basically
start to see their eggs sacksbasically blowing through those
(16:31):
small roots and you'll be ableto find them here very quickly.
So definitely be out therescouting doing some root digs.
Look very closely for thebright white right now on the
roots.
As we get a little bit furtherinto July they'll start turning
a little bit closer to a yellowon the cyst itself as they
harden off and then you'll seesome more generations later on,
but pretty easy to find themright now as you start looking.
(16:54):
So you gotta be really carefulwhen you dig those roots.
Don't just pull them up.
Make sure you get your spadeout there and do some digging
and just very lightly get thatsoil off as you're digging
through those.
So, but yeah, so number onewould be, you know, soybean
variety cultivars, right?
So we've got to look at thePeking or the PI88788, be the
two native resistance.
We have BASF, we keep talkingabout the Levo, the BRFC
(17:18):
treatment that definitelyprovides, you know, very good
control all the way through.
It's not season long by anymeans, but definitely get that
first generation taken care ofand really get protected against
even some other diseases, likesudden death syndrome, which
typically goes hand in hand withsoybean cyst nematode, as we've
talked before.
But a good time to startevaluating how that works Really
(17:40):
.
That's the best one that's onthe market today as far as the
seed treatment.
There's some other ones thathave claims that they actually
have some control against it,but really do your due diligence
to look those up and understandthat.
And then really the next thingfrom a BISF perspective would be
, you know, pending regulatoryapproval, our new NIMS, which is
(18:03):
the first BT protein basicallytargeted to go against soybean
cyst nematode.
So that's really the big pieceof the puzzle that you know a
lot of irons in fire, a lot oftools that we're going to be
using.
So, nate, what do you haveAnything else to add on soybean
cyst nematode?
You've seen.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I got a question for the two soybean experts here.
What are you seeing in nativetraits?
What kind of trends are youseeing with our native traits?
Why do we need this Nemispheretrait?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
So we're seeing the same thing in the native traits
as we're seeing with chemistrywhen you keep using the same
thing over and over and over, atolerance gets built up and the
efficacy is not working as much.
When it came in in the 2000swhen we had it the first culvers
, the pi 88788 you know it wasfantastic.
But if you look at that chartit is just slowly going down
(18:52):
with efficacy and they're justbuilding that up and it's a one
mode of action trait also.
That's what's so nice about thehemisphere coming up and built.
Add to this anything that Imiss or maybe misstated.
But once you bring thathemisphere in with the native
trait, those together, you havetwo modes of action.
So now you have two walls thereto hold them out and it's going
(19:14):
to be a step change in thenematode game coming forward.
Bill, anything to add?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, just a couple things there.
So PI-8788, we've been usingthat and that's been the
dominant native trade.
We've really overused it.
So peaking everybody says, well, why not peaking?
Let's just switch everything topeaking, because that's the one
that's kind of the breedershave been able to use now more
recently and they had troublegetting it to yield previously.
(19:42):
So why not just switcheverything to peaking?
Well, it comes down tounderstanding the biology of the
nematode and really how theyfeed.
So really the PI-8788, reallywhat it does is it only kills
the females, if you will.
So that's the big thing, thepeaking.
They both will feed and theyboth will survive.
(20:04):
But the males actually get offand they kind of do their own
thing and then they survive, soon and so forth, and spread love
all the way around and at theend of the day you get a very
quick resistance developmentbecause of the ability for them
to cross, cross, breed veryquickly and get that resistance
development.
So I just tried to get thatreally short and sweet for the
(20:25):
not get really in depth witheverybody here today.
But at the end of the day we gotto rotate.
We got to make sure that we do.
If you plant corn, basically goto P88788, plant corn again and
then go to Peking and thenmakes you rotate those different
native traits.
Never plant Peking back to backis the key.
So we actually broke Peking atour research farm in Indiana in
(20:48):
three years and there's farmersthat maybe listen to our podcast
out in Indiana that haveexperienced this already where
they've done peaking, peaking,peaking and it doesn't work.
We've also got at one of ourresearch sites in Nevada that
the farmer there also switchedeverything to peaking and he's
(21:08):
seeing reduced yields from usingtoo much peaking.
So that's the big thing around.
The story is just understandthe biology and don't plant it
back to back.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, it's going to be a game changer, that's for
darn sure.
Once it gets pending regulatoryapproval, once it comes out,
it's going to be a game changer.
So let's tweak back a littlebit.
We're getting here on soybeansand we want to hit a little bit
on corn here a little bit.
At the end, nate, what happensusually around the 20th, 21st of
(21:36):
June?
What goes on?
Our soybeans start to flower,start to flower.
One thing that we're going torun into every year depends on
where you're at white mold,right, we're going to be with
white mold soybeans and we knowthere's some management
practices.
Can you give us a little bit ofbackground on what white mold
(21:56):
is?
You know what are some of theconditions that makeASF that we
have to help that producer orthat customer help to fight some
of the white mold pressure thatcan be out there and help
minimize maybe some of thedamage we can see from it.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
You bet yeah.
So you know we've talked about,we've just gone through a
pretty warm spell, right, Dry,hot.
But if you look at the forecastat least the immediate forecast
the next 10 days, most ofgeography is going to experience
a lot of rain and ourtemperatures, especially in the
evenings, are going to get alittle more mild.
So that's going to favor allfungal pathogens, but one in
(22:36):
particular would be white moldthat we start thinking about
under these conditions.
So you need really adequatesoil moisture, right?
So white mold you know thesurvival structures for white
mold is those scleracea.
They look like rat droppings.
They can survive in the soilfor five to eight years until
they get the right conditions.
The right conditions are highsoil moisture, cool temperatures
(22:58):
and they produce apothecia,which is a little mushroom that
shoots the spores and they enterthe plant through the uh
blossoms as they begin todesiccate.
So that's when you need tostart thinking about white mold,
thinking about fungicideapplications on white mold.
As those plants bloom and asthat canopy closes.
(23:19):
Something we've learned fairlyrecently is what triggers those
apotheciates to produce sporesis a change in light wavelength.
So typically I would think,okay, canopy closure, right,
that could cause that.
But Bill has talked about firesmoke a couple times, if you
guys remember, jeff, especiallyin northeast Nebraska, I believe
it was 23.
In July we had fire smoke.
(23:40):
We had about a week of cooltemperatures, we weren't getting
rainfall but we were gettingheavy dews that persisted until
two or three in the afternoon.
All of a sudden, even innon-irrigated fields we had
reports of white mold, right.
So conditions we have this nextweek we've got plants that are
going to be flowering.
So you know if you're thinkingabout a fungicide, we have
Endura is a white moldspecialist, bosclid, it's SDHI,
(24:05):
and then we have a new onecalled Zarina, which is Endura,
plus Revisol, which is ourblockbuster, trizol.
That's in a lot of our productstogether.
As far as timing, that is thetrick with white mold when you
make a fungicide application,you only protect the blossoms
present at the time of theapplication, and you guys know
(24:25):
so it means blossom for 50 to 60days, right?
So when we talk timing, firstwe're looking for blossoms, but
then I want to start looking atsoil moisture and how close we
are to row closure.
As we get close to row closureand maybe get closer to R2, r1
plus a week, we want to get asmany blossoms as we can and hit
those beans right when the rowcloses, and that's probably our
(24:48):
best bet, uh, to have goodperformance out of those
fungicides and control whitemold yeah, yeah, no, that's and
that's something we're going todeal with.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And, bill, you know we talk about white mold.
You know nate brought up 2023and yeah, we had fields, just
dry line fields.
I remember walking through themat three in the afternoon and
you were soaked and it's likewhat's going on, um, but then we
didn't have it last year.
You know, white mold actuallylast year was lining up pretty
good too for white moldinfestation.
You know that r1, r2, we werewet and cloudy.
(25:19):
I remember fourth of julyeverybody thought, hey, I'm
gonna have a four-day weekendbecause it's on fourth, is on a
thursday, and it was like 65degrees and rainy and miserable,
right, and nobody enjoyedfourth of July camping.
But you know we were sittinghere going, all right, it's
gonna be a lot of white mold out.
We didn't see it anywhere.
Okay, what's?
What's your expectation forwhite mold this year?
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
yeah, yeah, my thoughts right now definitely
for the northern part of Iowa,the northern southern part of
Minnesota, for sure, in myopinion, definitely going to be
a pretty good year for them,right, wrong or indifferent for
looking at.
I think there's going to beparts of the entire Midwest
they're going to have it,especially as you get further
east.
They've got a lot more moistureout there.
(26:00):
So I think you get into thatnorthern Illinois, indiana,
southern Wisconsin, all the waythrough over to Michigan and
Northern Ohio.
You get in through that.
I think there's going to be apretty good chance that they
have it as well, because I thinkthey've got, as we go back to
the yield triangle, you knowwe've got the disease triangle
right.
So you've got the host, you'vegot the pathogen, you've got the
environment.
So I think those three factorsare going to align for sure.
(26:27):
I think in the southern part ofIowa I don't know that we're
going to get as much as what wehave.
There might be some southeastIowa that might get some, as we
continue to see that one movingsouth in Iowa, for example.
But I think we're maybe just atick too dry and I don't think
we're quite going to be canopiedin a lot of areas where I think
we typically would have been.
I think some of the early beans, like you mentioned, jeff,
they're getting closer to canopy.
When I say early, that's earlyApril that we're planting, I
(26:48):
think there's some potentialthere.
but I think we got to as long asyou think this through and you
kind of planned accordingly andadjusted your row spacing and
widened that up and potentiallylowered your population and or
selected a variety that has areally high white mold tolerance
.
I think those are all thethings that are important that
you got to review and this is agood time to review your
(27:09):
decisions and adjust yourmanagement practices going
forward.
But, like Nate said, you knowthere's some definitely some key
fungicides that can be used outthere and there's some others
that are quite a lot of claimsyou know, definitely dig into
them to make sure that they havethe control that you're looking
for.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, and oh, by the way, nate, we were talking in
2023, it was bad.
And then you made the commentthe rat droppings sit there for
five to eight years, right?
Yep?
Well, it was ever bad in 23, orbeans again this year.
So you know products thereright now.
If the environment hits, wecould see a lot of it in those
(27:48):
spots.
So, no great comments, greatinformation, guys.
So you know, this has basicallybeen focused as a bean
conversation.
It's called Spilling the Beansfor that reason.
But you know, we wanted to turnand go a little bit in the corn.
We like to eat corn once in awhile because, you know, a lot
of our listeners are, you know,plant a lot of corn too.
You know we've heard a dirtylittle word the last week come
(28:09):
around.
It's called tar spot and beenlast week.
Phones have been blowing up.
You look at that tar spot mapthat they put out there, all
these counties.
You know Nebraska we're seeingit here, where we didn't even
think about it.
Now it's already in the middlepart of the state.
They're finding it on V8, v9corn.
So, nate, this is where yourexpertise comes into.
(28:29):
So could you talk to ourcustomers, our producers and our
individuals who are listening.
Could you kind of give themsome of the background?
What is tar spot?
Why are we seeing it and whatcan we see for losses and what
can we do as a preventativemeasure to help minimize some of
that damage?
Because it is for a lot of usit is a new thing that we've
(28:50):
never dealt with before, andthere's some products out there
that work really good on it andthere's some that don't.
So we want to make sure thatwe're spending our dollars
wisely, the way we're doing itand getting the best bang for
our dollars.
So you know I'm going to sitback me and Bill are going to
sit back and let you take awayhere for a few minutes, because
this is really down your chutehole there.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
All right, yeah, appreciate it, appreciate the
time.
I think tar spot is going to bea big deal this year.
Jeff, you mentioned that we'reseeing it well into the central
part of Nebraska earlier than weever have under pivot
irrigation.
That's something I'm going tobe watching closely because
we've had it in those areas, butit has come in very late, um,
so this year it got a startearly enough.
(29:29):
I think it will.
It may have a major impact.
So real quick background tarspot is a fairly new disease
showed up in 2015 in Illinoisand Indiana.
Um, it's a South Americandisease.
It's been a corn disease downthere, uh, since the early 1900s
.
Um, down there is actually twopathogens.
We just have one of thosepathogens up here, so it's
obviously it's changed a littlebit.
(29:50):
How it got up here, we don'tknow for sure.
There's some theories out there.
I'm not going to go into thosetoday, but filichloromatis is
the pathogen.
It's obligate biotroph right,so it requires a living host,
which is obviously corn.
So some things that are uniqueto tar spot that we don't see in
(30:12):
some of our other fungalpathogens is it's so prolific,
right?
It cycles continuously if youhave the right environment.
So what you need to get tarspot development.
It overwinters in a residueright once you've had it
development.
It overwinters in a residueright once you've had it um in
the spring.
I, the going theory and Iagreed to this theory is you
need a hard rain in june, splashit up and then you need to
(30:34):
continue to have rain in coolertemperatures.
Uh, only need seven hours ofleaf wetness.
But once you start seeing thoselittle specks, those tar spot
um uh lesions, those start topump out spores and it's
Ascomycetes.
The nickname for that type offungi is the spore shooting
fungi.
I actually have a video wherewe've taken a leaf and put it
(30:57):
under a microscope and you cansee that lesion just sitting
there going boop, boop, boop,pumping out spores.
So that's why this disease whenwe have the right conducive
environment, right, lots of cool, wet days, heavy dues when this
pathogen gets going, it can bevery serious.
The other thing is the latentperiod on tar spot.
This is not a disease where youwant to sit back and wait until
(31:19):
you see it.
The latent period can be up to20 days.
So I just found my first tarspot lesion in Madison County,
iowa, last week, last Monday,and that tells me that that
plant was infected.
Mid to late May is when thatplant is a B7 plant because you
don't see those lesions tillthat latent period's up.
(31:40):
So lots of times you know, wehear on fungal, on corn diseases
, a lot of uh even say don'tspray until you see disease.
Tar spots not one where youwant to do that, you want to be
proactive now.
As far as timing, if you see itearly, should you spray early?
I don't think so at this point.
Maybe you'll get aggressiveenough someday where I'm going
(32:00):
to tell you to do that.
But typically I'm going to saytry and get close to that vt,
that tassassel, right.
As you guys know, when cornplants develop, once they hit VT
they're done putting out leaves.
They're not like soybeans,right?
So all the leaves that thatplant is going to use to produce
that year are present.
And as that plant shifts itsfocus from building the plant to
filling grain, right, it's gotthe factory built.
(32:23):
Now it's going to produce theproduct.
It's going to produce thatgrain.
All of its energy goes intothat.
So those plants are reallysusceptible to fungal pathogens
at that point.
So my recommendation is, ifyou've had a history of tar spot
, plan a fungicide applicationat VT.
The other thing to keep in mindis for the folks that sit back
and don't get scheduled withyour aerial applicator or your
(32:44):
applicator when tar spot blowsup a lot of people.
If you're not already on thelist, your corn might not get
sprayed until R3.
I've seen it happen.
I think we're set up for thatto happen this year.
So be prepared, have a plan.
Veltema fungicide from us is agreat product.
It has headline amp in it,which gives us some great
(33:06):
disease control as well as planthealth characteristics, and
then Revisol our new triazole,which has unsurpassed disease
control.
Some things I like to tellpeople.
If you've had a history of tarspot, you're worried about it.
Our environment definitely islining up.
Seven ounces of L-team would bethe base rate.
You can go up to 10.
I did a trial last year thatreally showed under tar spot
(33:29):
pressure.
It came in kind of late lastyear but we had decent pressure.
That, going from seven to 10,increased our ROI by $25 an acre
and that includes the cost offungicide, everything.
You're not incurring anotherapplication cost like you are.
If you come back again, you'rejust going up three ounces.
It was a very nice return Nowcould we get into situations
(33:50):
where we need more than oneapplication, especially under
pivot irrigation.
We might find that out this yearbecause that pivot it's such a
conducive environment for thetar spot In Michigan.
What they found is under pivotirrigation tar spot just shifts
to a whole new gear.
It's just a whole other animal.
So we haven't found out yet inNebraska because it hasn't come
(34:11):
early until this year.
So we may see in Nebraska thisyear we might have to hit it
again with another applicationof fungicide.
We're in the learning periodright now, but I would say for
sure, if you're worried, bumpthat first application.
Up to 10 ounces of Veltemawould be my recommendation.
Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
So I was out in the field the other day and I found
tar spot.
I looked at him hey, I found atar spot, and then I licked my
thumb and it worked off.
Okay, I've got several caseswhere, um, you know, people
thought it was tar spot.
It's not.
You know, give a little quicklittle background on on.
(34:51):
Does it wipe off?
Does it what does it wipe off?
I mean, how do you know?
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Okay, so what you're looking for is a spec that'll
kind of look like you know a flypoop, right, um?
But like you said, jeff, canyou rub it off with your
thumbnail?
If you can rub it off, thenit's.
It's not tar spot.
If it's tar spot, it'll likelybe irregular shaped.
It won't be you know a perfectcircular oval.
(35:15):
Lots of times they're kind ofalmost diamond shaped looking.
It'll be raised when you rubyour finger over it.
It won't rub off and it'll beraised up on the leaf.
If you turn that leaf over,you'll be able to see it from
the backside too.
If you can meet all thosequalifications, then you've
probably found tar spot.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, and we highly recommend too that if you are
out in the field and you thinkyou found it, send a sample into
your university.
Let's get that, let's get thatverified, that that's what we're
looking out there for.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
So Bill, you know what do you have to add?
I've been, yeah, so you knowI've gone out there.
I'm walking through my fieldsand I find it and I'm like bam.
I found on this corn hybrid.
But I go to the next one.
I didn't find this corn hybrid.
Are there differences in cornhybrids?
So what can you tell us there?
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Yeah, there are, just like, you know, we found with
Northern corn leaf blight.
I don't know if anybodyremembers 2015.
I'm not going to name any names, but there were a particular
hybrid of one company where, ifyou were driving down the road
at 60 miles per hour, you'relike, oh yeah, that's that
hybrid, because you could tellit was sick.
Right, tar spot's the same way.
You know the breeders arestarting to try and you know,
(36:24):
look at it and take that intoaccount, but I don't think we'll
probably ever be able to breedour way out of tar spot.
It's just such an aggressivedisease.
Certainly, you know it can helphaving a more tolerant hybrid.
But if you have idealconditions, you have a ton of
inoculum around.
You probably still are going toneed to spray a fungicide.
(36:44):
But you know and I didn't getinto losses that we can see with
tar spot, I guess you knowwe've seen 50 bushel plus losses
in the eastern corn belt.
Once you have it, you knowenough of knocking where you're
getting it early, um, and again,you add irrigation to that.
We may learn some things thisyear right in nebraska, uh, when
it comes to tar spots.
So definitely one that to keepyour eyes on this year.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Absolutely, absolutely yeah, how about?
How far north is it going?
Is it up in south dakota?
Is in minnesota?
Where's where's that?
Speaker 4 (37:13):
yeah it's, it's up in South Dakota.
It's not this year yet, but Iexpect it.
We'll see it fairly soon upthere.
You know they're probably justa little bit further behind as
far as plant stage.
I'd never heard of it earlierthan about V8.
I found it in V7 corn.
We had a rep find it in V4 cornthis this year, which is crazy,
(37:34):
scary.
So that's what I'm saying rightnow.
I probably won't recommend thatyou try and make a fungicide
application before vt.
But I'm leaving that windowopen because as we learn more
about this disease, as we getmore local inoculum I call it
homegrown tar spot, where you'regetting it from the residue in
the field, not having to waitfor it to blow in we may adjust
(37:57):
those recommendations down theroad someday so it's pretty much
safe to say that if you growcorn, the potentials it's coming
.
It's just a matter of not if,but when yeah, the ability that
of it to spread, especially 21,22, 23 western corn belt dry,
dry, drought years.
But we saw it first in sixcounties, I believe in 21 in
(38:19):
nebraska, and then we jumped upto 30 some and then 40.
Some came in late but even in asevere drought, going against
the predominant wind, we saw itspread.
So this is like I said it's,it's got some unique
characteristics, very aggressivedisease.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Great information.
Shift gears one second.
So, as we think about tar spot,you know just we're not going
to go in details on it, but namea few other diseases we got to
be watching for in corn, andthen name a few other diseases
we got to be watching for insoybeans, then name a few other
diseases we got to be watchingfor in soybeans.
Let's kind of wrap it up withthat.
And then quick recommendationis it veltema or revitec?
(38:59):
Which way would you go on eachof those?
So just wrap it up okay, so.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
So, as I, as I said earlier, you know, looking at
our forecast, at least in thenext 10 days, cooler, especially
evening temps are going to getback cool.
We've been kind of high lately.
We're going to get back tothose moderate, more moderate.
We're going to get back cool.
We've been kind of high lately.
We're going to get back tothose moderate, more moderate.
We're going to have lots ofleaf wetness, lots of moisture.
We've already had some firesmoke, all these fungal
pathogens, like overcast skies,right, even beyond white mold.
(39:25):
They all prefer overcast.
So other things I'm thinkingabout in corn northern corn leaf
blight.
I mentioned 2015.
That was a year we had a lot ofmoisture in july, so let's see
what the forecast does.
Um, that could be one.
We see gray leaf spot justabout every year.
Um, it likes heat right,shorter latent period needs the
moisture, but it, you know, 85degrees won't shut it down.
(39:48):
80 degrees will shut downnorthern corn leaf blight tar
spot.
We think darcy toinka, umpathologist at purdue, believes
once you get the initialinfection, moisture is the most
important thing.
If temperature goes up, you'renot necessarily going to shut
down tar spot if you keepgetting moisture.
That's her belief.
So they all act a littledifferent.
The great thing is we've gotveltema fungicide corn.
(40:11):
We also have revitec.
You can use either, but Veltimais my go-to in corn.
It works on all these diseases.
We have some of the longestresidual out there with that
Revisol component.
A VT application goes a longways to protecting that corn
yield.
The other thing with tar spotis when you have other pathogens
pile on top of it.
It's not a one plus one right,it's a multiplier.
(40:34):
We can see real devastation.
So that's the other thing tokeep in mind.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I've already seen some anthracnose in my tar spot
plot, where I found tar spot.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
So I've already got two pathogens going in there,
right.
So keep all those things inmind.
Watch this forecast.
Soybeans we've got Revitek.
You start thinking aboutSceptoria, brown spot, frog eye
leaf spot.
You know revitech is great onall those products.
It's got that sdhi component,that xemium component, along
with the headline and therevisol.
Another side of action aroundthose soybean diseases works
(41:05):
really well.
I usually want to see thatabout r3.
A reason for timing on that isyou know, 60 of your yield and
soybeans comes from that middlethird of the canopy.
When you get to R3, that partof the canopy is developed there
to receive that application.
We know those beans are goingto put on some more leaves but
those are the most importantones to protect yield.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Anything you guys want to add on the soybean side
of things.
No, yeah, you're spot on andyou know.
To add that onto the corn too,the northern corn leaf blight
has been showing up this weekand there is a lot more
anthracnose out in these cornfields that farmers realize this
year from that later may, earlypart of june, weather that we
had.
So we have the you know, withthe triangles there and we're
(41:49):
starting to see it bill.
You have anything to to addbefore we sign out?
Speaker 3 (41:53):
yeah, no, I, I think, uh, you know a lot of good
stuff here with nate.
Uh, a lot, a lot of stuff tounpack here as you think through
it's that.
It's that busy time of theseason when we're all out
scouting.
You know, we're busy runningaround and looking at a lot of
different things are going outthere in the field.
So again, keep your eyes open.
If you don't know what it is,call, call.
You know, send a sample in.
(42:15):
You know, give us a call orgive your rep a call.
Whoever you work with, you know, just ask for help and
hopefully we can figure outwhat's going on out there.
And you know, I've had morecalls and actually got some
potassium deficiency going on inIowa all of a sudden.
Never even seen that for a longtime.
Go figure that out.
But again, it's that moistureand and, uh, not very mobile
nutrient and a lot of things.
(42:35):
So you get get a lot ofquestions of what is this right?
So, so definitely reach outthere.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
So with that.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
That's all I got for Nate and, uh, we'll kind of let
Nate roll and we can close herup.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Thanks so much, great information.
Really appreciate you takingthe time.
Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
See you later.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Well, bill, we, uh, uh, we unwrapped a lot of things
in today's episode, you know,and it is.
You know, you're talking busytime, we're talking fungicides.
We're talking, you know, theinsecticides.
We're talking diseases we couldsee.
Oh, by the way, we're still gotpeople trying to finish up with
post and corn post and soybeans, uh, trying to get their
fertilizer put on either too dryor liquid.
There's all these things thatyou know.
(43:13):
We're just such a busy timeright now, so I hope everybody's
being safe out there.
But you know what was, what was?
A couple really key points didyou take away from today's
conversation with Nate?
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Yeah, no, a lot, a lot of a lot of key points that
you know.
We've got a pretty long episodehere so we'll go through all of
them.
But at the end of the day, youknow, you think about, you know
tolerance, I think abouttolerant corn hybrids and
tolerant soybean varieties.
Definitely, you know, I alwayslike to say it starts with the
seeds.
Definitely, get that figuredout.
And then there's thesemanagement things we can do
(43:44):
afterwards and we can reallylook at.
You know the differentfungicides and different rates
and different timings.
You know, and everything thatNate said there was spot on.
You know, and everything thatNate said there was spot on.
So you know the, the tar spot,you know, learn a little bit
more about it and kind of, youknow big time South America that
has got, you know, twodifferent genes, if you will
(44:04):
down there, two differentcomponents, and we only got the
one up here.
So thank God for that.
We only got the one, I guess,if you call that a thankful
thing.
So, but you know we talkedabout, you know, the soybean
cyst, nematodes, gall midge.
You know those, those.
You know what that's going onthere.
We got a lot of work to do onthat one in the industry to
really take, you know, after agall midge, and you know BASF
we're doing a lot of work thereon SCN, so we're definitely, you
know, focused on that one, butthis gall type pest is where it
(44:26):
seems to be honed in, right nowat least.
So, yeah, tar spot, wow, what adisease and what a devastating
one that we've got to continueto understand and learn more
about and how to manage and helpour customers do that.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
So how about you?
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Jeff, what did you pick up today?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah, just real quickly.
You hit on a lot of things, butyou know the reality of it is
white mold and tar spot.
It's here to stay.
Once you have it, you're goingto have it.
So it's all comes down to keymanagement practices.
You know I'm a firm believer ina fungicide.
Never you always break even onworst case scenario with the
fungicide application.
You know you always get areturn on investment.
(45:10):
The worst would be a break even.
It's managing to protect thatcrop, to maximize the yield you
have out there.
But one thing we do know is thatonce we get something figured
out, mother nature throws usanother curve ball and we go
back to step one.
So again, just be diligent andunderstand what's going on in
your fields and utilize thatopportunity.
(45:32):
If a fungicide can protect youfrom that, especially like a tar
spot, you know, get it outthere because it's going to be
important, because the yielddevastation you can see with
some of these diseases is reallyhuge.
So, with that being said, yeah,we've rambled on quite a bit
here, but a lot of goodinformation and a lot of good
information that can be utilizedyet Right.
(45:52):
So we still incorporateinformation that can be utilized
yet right.
So we can still incorporate.
So, with that being said, meand Bill, we just want to thank
you for joining us again todayon this episode of Spilling the
Beans.
We invite you to download theGrow Smart Live app for more
resources and share this podcastwith other growers.
So for myself and from Bill,please be safe out there, stay
cool and make it a great day.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Thanks for joining us on spilling the beans, where
every episode gets you one stepcloser to maximizing your
soybean profitability.
If you found today's insightsvaluable, subscribe and leave us
a review on your favoriteplatform.
Download the grow smart liveapp for more resources and share
the podcast with other growers.
See you next week with moreexpert tips to help you grow
(46:35):
smarter and achieve the bestyields yet.
Liberty Outlook, zidua, ziduaPro, poncho Potivo, precise,
endura, rivitec, fastax, cs,elevo, vault, ip Plus, relenia,
dryaxor, liberty Ultra areregistered trademarks of BASF.
Nemisphere, zorina and Vorexorare trademarks of BASF.
Enlist, enlist One, enlist Duoand Enlist E3 are registered
(46:55):
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(47:24):
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(47:45):
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Welcome to Spilling the Beans, the podcast that
spills the secrets to unlockingyour soybean farm's full
potential.
Every Tuesday, your hosts, billBackus and Jeff Mueller, dive
into expert strategies andinnovative solutions that will
help you boost your yields andmaximize your returns.
Whether you're a seasonedgrower or new to soybean farming
, we're here to help you succeed.
Let's get started.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Spilling the
Beans.
I'm Jeff Mueller.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
And I'm Bill Beckes.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
And thanks again for joining us as we dive into the
world of soybeans, coveringvarious topics and providing
insights to the soybean industry.
Bill, good to see you again.
How you been doing.
We've been beating it prettyhard here for the month of June.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
So how's things going in your neck of the woods?
Yeah, been fast and furious.
Just a lot of productevaluation, a lot of product
trainings, trying to dodge thewind and the heat and stay cool.
Got here locally we had CollegeWorld Series going on on, so
(01:10):
that just ended up here recently.
So all all uh, lots of thingsgoing on in june and you know, a
lot of crops continue to growand really just continue to look
.
Look pretty good for the mostpart, but got some questions.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
So yeah, yeah, no, that you're.
You're spot on um, yes and umfor all intents and purposes.
I did want coastal carolina towin over lsu but it happened
through that.
You know, one of the things youmade comment on there heat and
some wind.
You know we've just wentthrough a weekend here where we
had three, four days of tripledigits and 30 and 40 mile an
(01:34):
hour winds out of the South andyou know we've had some moisture
but we've been getting somemoisture.
So we've got the heat now we'vegot the moisture and, man,
things are taking off.
I've had quite a few calls,individuals talking about
cultivating corn or sidedressing and they're breaking it
off or it's like it grew.
You know it was waist heightlast week and now it's shoulder
height.
You know it's just going sofast, so it's ready to go.
(01:54):
But you know we've noticed insome cases, you know the corn's
taking a little longer to go andit's finally taken off.
But we've also noticed in thesoybeans some of them seem to be
a little bit behind or maybethey're not coming as fast as we
anticipate.
And I know every year we'realways like man are they ever
going to grow?
Are they ever going to get tocanopy.
And then they get there.
But you know you've beennoticing some things over there
(02:15):
in your neck of the woods.
You know kind of.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
You know, we always like to dive into this story
time kind of seeing, or what doyou got some thoughts on there,
bill?
Yeah, yeah, thanks, jeff, it'sdefinitely been an interesting
spring, you know.
But you know, I think the onethat jumps out the most is as I
travel the you know my area, thestate of Iowa, here, and you
get into looking at a lot ofdifferent environments and from
(02:37):
the west to the east it'sdefinitely drier in the west and
you got more moisture in theeast and that's really where
we're kind of at from myperspective, and and really just
looking at a lot of soybeanfields and you know, had I got
some that are planted on theexact same day and they're, uh,
you know, an hour drive apartand they are three different
stages, if you will.
(02:58):
So I've got some that are onlyat v2, v3, that they're planted
forever.
They're just sitting there,it's kind of stuck.
And then, and then I've gotsummer V6, v7, v8, and R1
already.
So I was cruising down the roadthe other day and talked to our
guest, so we'll go ahead andbring him in.
I was talking to Nate Quam hereon kind of what his thoughts
were as well.
We had a pretty good banterthere.
(03:18):
So, nate, welcome.
Good discussion we had theother day.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
So how are you?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
by the way, I'm good, good to be with you guys.
Thanks for joining us, yeah,thanks, thanks again for your
time.
So so we were, we were talking,we were just trying to come up
with some ideas and you know, wekind of cover some similar
areas and, and you know, nateworked with Jeff and, and both I
and Jeff and you know we'relooking at Was it the?
Was it the smoke from Canadacoming down?
You know, was it just just?
(03:49):
You know what was it?
So, nate, you did a littledigging.
Can you share a little bitabout what you found there?
Speaker 4 (03:54):
Yeah, I got on Iowa State's Mesonet website and
looked at soil temperature thisyear versus the last five years
for you know whatever day wetalked, bill, last week, and we
are a little cooler, so there'sdefinitely a component there.
Other things I'm seeing I'm onthe crop protection side of
things with BASF A lot of callson beans that are reacting to
(04:17):
herbicide applications right, sowith the slow development, thin
cuticles.
So when you use an adjuvant orEC, herbicides can act as an oil
.
We're seeing some responsesthere.
So that's also, uh, related tothe slow development we're
seeing this year yeah you know,yeah, so definitely interesting.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
So you know you've been on here before.
You know we didn't take thetime to introduce you, but you
know tech service rep coveringwestern western iowa, eastern
nebraska, for us and been doingthis a long time and I was
really thinking into.
You know what is it.
And you know the soybeans Imean the heat that we've had
over the past.
You know, week here they'vestarted growing again but boy,
(04:56):
they were just stuck and that'sjust really getting a lot of
weird calls on that.
So, jeff, what are you seeingout there on development?
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Yeah, you know we were drier and warmer to begin
with.
You know, up until about themid-May we were, you know,
almost historically dryconditions, so our beans
actually came along pretty good.
But then when we startedgetting those rains the last
part of May, you know it slowedthings down.
From that standpoint, the onething I would like to ask you
guys also is you know we do alot of strip till, we do a lot
(05:24):
of no-till, we don't do a wholelot of full tillage on our
fields.
Did you notice anythingdifferent versus a stripped,
versus a just slotting it into ano-till?
Because over here I noticedwhere it opened it up more.
We had bare soil.
You know the beans are biggerand more aggressive than in the
type of no-till and I think werun into that every year.
(05:45):
It just stays cooler.
It just yeah, it just takesmore time coming through.
Are you seeing some of those orsome of those?
Related is what kind ofthinking?
Also.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Absolutely.
And that's one of the thingsthat Nate and I talked about as
well was some tillage.
And you know I got a couple offarms that I do different trials
on.
And you know I got a couple offarms that I do different trials
on and one of them ironicallyhas no till, has corn stalks or
beans going into, you know, notilled in corn stalks, and then
I've got beans into tilledground following I think it was
(06:19):
oats stubble where they actuallytilled that.
And then there's across thesame strip there's some corn
stalks in there as well.
So you actually can see, fromstarting the east, going to the
west, these plants are, the rowsare going east west.
You can see the difference inhow much different they are.
But the other thing they hadgoing for them is they had more
rain over there too.
I mean, there's, there's thatfactor in there as well.
(06:42):
There's also and again that'swhat had me really scratching my
head was, you know there's alsoabout a line of where we had
that Canadian smoke coming down.
It wasn't quite as bad to theeast and it was a little worse
to the west.
So you know, beans, as we'vetalked in our G by E by M, yield
triangle.
We've talked about solarradiation, we've talked about
their light harvesters andthat's a big part of it.
And I think to your point, jeff, on the full width tail aid
(07:04):
versus strip tail versus no tail.
There's definitely some thingsas you guys got.
You know, we have differentfarmers who have different
settings on their no tailequipment.
You have the true no tailerswho are barely moving any, any
of the residue.
You have some of them that arejust, you know, putting it out
there and you know, move on toresidue to get it black and
almost.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah, so, nate, I'll ask you well, but but, uh, yeah,
go ahead, I'll ask you thisquestion.
Um, and bill, add in on to ittoo.
I've also noticed the earlierplanted beans seem to not have
slowed down, have had moreconsistent growth than some of
the later planted beans too.
And I think you make the pointon that earlier planted we had
better conditions, we didn'tsmoke, we had a lot of those
things that could take off andgo.
(07:49):
Once we got to about that midMay, you know, 10th of May on,
you know it had some otherchallenges I had to work with.
So I think again, anotheradvantage to maybe having some
of that early planted beans toois we're seeing some.
I having some of that earlyplanted beans too, is we're
(08:10):
seeing some.
I've got early planted beans up, you know april 15th, I, I'm
not kidding you.
I think they're going to beclose to canopy here by fourth
of july and then I'm close tomay stuff that I hope it's
canopied by the middle of augustbecause it's, you know, so far
behind.
So just it, just make adifference timing, I agree.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
Um, you know I'm seeing similar things.
We had a real nice window therein April before we got the.
We needed the moisture, Don'tget me wrong.
We needed that moisture.
We got in May but we alsocooled down and we did not
accumulate GDU.
So those beans that werealready up and going I agree
probably have a leg up on thoselater planted beans that had to
(08:42):
fight through those coldconditions to emerge.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Yeah, no, that's great.
So so we know we're we alwaysevery year, so we go into this
and you know every year isdifferent, right?
You know I always heareverybody say I can't wait for a
normal year or we don't havenormal years anymore.
It changes all the time.
But you know, every year wedeal with some type of insects
or maybe some type of disease,whether it's corn, whether it's
bean.
One year is different from thenext.
But you know, we've been hearinga little bit and, bill, I'm
(09:07):
going to address this out to youbecause I know you really were
at the epicenter of where thiscame into but you know we've
been hearing some conversationsout there the last couple of
three weeks about a pest calledsoybean garbage and we've been
seeing it in soybeans and a lotof people.
You know, let's be honest, it'snew.
A lot of people don't reallyknow much about it.
So can you give us a little bitof information on that kind of
(09:30):
what you're seeing and what aresome management practices we can
look at going forward if weneed to manage soybean gall
midge?
Speaker 3 (09:39):
Yeah, I'll jump in there and get us started here.
So gall midge I mean you getinto.
I forget the year I should havelooked it up, but 20, let's say
2018, 2019, I forget what yearit was, but Galtmidge, you know,
one of those first places Ifound in Iowa would have been in
Cass County, which which, forme, I'm in Pottawatomie County,
but it was only about 10 milesstraight east of me is where it
(09:59):
was found and you know, firstyear out actually, when I had a
cooperator over there, weactually did some trials and
started looking at some varietalresponses.
We did find that there are somesome unique things.
So that's one idea would be avarietal response and management
.
There's more to follow there.
University of Nebraska does alot of work on this already and
(10:20):
definitely literally digginginto it right and looking at a
lot of different things thatthey're doing.
But you know, one of the mainavenues that they found would be
some cultivation, if you will,throwing some soil up against
the base where the midgeactually lays some small fly
laser eggs in the fissures ofthe stem, basically the base,
and then the eggs hatch and theygrow into call it a maggot
(10:43):
basically, if you will.
That's basically themicroscopic worm.
That's basically kind ofcruising around there and
chewing on the the base of thatstem and and eventually gets
brittle and falls over.
So so that's that's, you know,a couple of quick things.
So, nate, how about you?
What are you seeing?
Speaker 4 (10:57):
we we've, uh, we see a lot of this and you get a lot
of stuff from the cropprotection side, anything there
that we can use yeah, so so wehave had our first reports of
adults emerging, so so onepractice that people have been
trying to do, so there's theybelieve there's three
generations, so that's the trick.
So it's all about timing.
Uh is applying a uh foiler,insecticide pyrethroids,
(11:19):
typically uh to try and killthose adults.
So they they will come fromlast year's soybean fields and
they're very weak flyers, sothey will come from last year's
soybean fields and they're veryweak flyers, so they will
typically fly into the edges ofa soybean field, although we
have had cases where they'vegotten further in the last
couple years.
But the idea is about when yourbeans are susceptible right,
they got to be V2 before thosefissures start to develop.
(11:42):
If you're got, you know ifyou're next to a bean field
where you've had a history oftrouble, or in a bean field
where you've had them when yourbeans hit V2, there is a Golmage
network where you can sign upto get notified for when they're
being found in your area.
You can try and you know timean insecticide application.
You probably don't need to dothe whole field Lots of times,
(12:06):
maybe just the outside 120 feet,um, but the trick is timing and
, like I said, uh, they believethere may be as many as three um
emergencies of these adults.
Uh, starting about now, uh,through july, I believe it goes.
So so that's another practice.
Um, there are some soilinsecticides that have a little
bit of movement in in the plant.
There's two e-labels out therefor some of those really old
(12:26):
products.
Again, I've looked at the dataon those and it's kind of
inconclusive how effective theyare.
Maybe effective for that firstemergence, but obviously as time
goes on it's going to lose it.
The insecticides lose itseffectiveness.
So you're probably not going to, you know, kill the ones that
come in all that thirdgeneration.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Yeah, yeah, no, that's great comment.
So I would ask this.
So if I'm a producer, I'm outthere.
Of course I don't have it overhere yet in in western Nebraska,
but it is, you know, along theMissouri River, you know kind of
.
So two things First of all,seed treatment.
So two things First of all,seed treatment.
Is that going to take care ofmy soybean gall midge?
(13:07):
And secondly is how do younotice when you have them out in
the fields?
What do you see?
What's the damage you observe?
A lot of times we'll get thecall oh, just driving down the
road, what's going on with mybeans, or whatever.
That's probably how a lot ofthem see it too.
Right, what do you see?
What's some of that damage yousee, and how would you
(13:27):
investigate?
Speaker 4 (13:28):
it to see if that's what you had.
So typically what people startto see is plants, you know later
in the season, plants in theheadlands, the edges of fields,
a dead plant here and there.
So if you go and investigatethose plants and you split the
stem, you'll see those maggotsin there.
They go through three end stars.
Initially they're going to bealmost translucent and then, as
(13:53):
they go through the next endstar turn kind of white and then
the final one, they turn brightorange.
And I remember I was in WesternIowa about the same time.
Bill was talking about in a in aco-op in the office, and the
guy throws a soybean stem at meand says what the heck are these
?
And I'm like I don't know whatthose are.
I mean they're just a crazylooking orange, little little
grub.
Um, but that's how you know youhave them.
(14:14):
Uh is when you, when you startseeing them and and like bill
said, you know they feed on thatvascular tissue which cuts off
that flow of water nutrients tothe plant and they kill the
plant ultimately so yeah, yeahand then yeah, that's one thing
I like to do is when you'redigging them and you look for
them, you know, we just verylightly pull that that stem.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
Uh, uh, the, the coating on the stem.
If you have the skin basicallyaround, look at that vascular
test you underneath there.
They're just right barelyunderneath it and they're.
They're sometimes hard to findbut you can kind of see and you
kind of see those fissures andthey kind of get a, a gall, if
you know what, that's why theycall them a gall midge.
They get that gall, basicallygrowth on the base of that stem
there.
So, um, you know, if you thinkabout a tree and a gall on a
(14:58):
tree, it's the same same term,if you will.
Um, but, uh, you know, thinkingabout that and what they do.
So a lot of research going on.
Hats off to all the universityextension personnel out there,
tons of entomologists trying tofigure this thing out.
They're doing a lot of research.
So more to follow.
So definitely, as Nate said,you know, hop on that gall midge
network.
Speaker 2 (15:17):
So yeah, no, no Great .
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, jeff, go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead, go ahead, jeff.
Yeah, no, and then I did seeyou shaking your head on seed
treatments.
Speaker 4 (15:29):
You know, no, yeah, sorry, uh, as a later, you know
as a later pest past v2.
Obviously our seed treatmentsonly last for so long, right?
Speaker 2 (15:37):
so unfortunately that's not an option no, no,
that's great, which actuallykind of leads me into my next
question.
So you know we've always talkedabout, you know, seed treatment
, how it's valuable, especiallyhaving a levo out there for some
of the stuff.
You know there's going to beanother pest we're going to be
finding here pretty soon, maybealready out there, bill.
It's called cyst nematode,soybean cyst nematode.
(15:57):
You know what are you seeingout there right now, what can we
be looking for, and you knowwhat's the value of seed
treatments with soybean cystnematodes that we have going out
there and that's something,yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
All good questions, jeff.
Yeah, go ahead.
Yeah, all good questions.
So, yeah, so, really, right nowagain, we we've been talking,
you know.
Number one it's time.
It's time for those soybeancyst nematode to be hatching and
the nematodes are starting tofeed and females will basically
start to see their eggs sacksbasically blowing through those
(16:31):
small roots and you'll be ableto find them here very quickly.
So definitely be out therescouting doing some root digs.
Look very closely for thebright white right now on the
roots.
As we get a little bit furtherinto July they'll start turning
a little bit closer to a yellowon the cyst itself as they
harden off and then you'll seesome more generations later on,
but pretty easy to find themright now as you start looking.
(16:54):
So you gotta be really carefulwhen you dig those roots.
Don't just pull them up.
Make sure you get your spadeout there and do some digging
and just very lightly get thatsoil off as you're digging
through those.
So, but yeah, so number onewould be, you know, soybean
variety cultivars, right?
So we've got to look at thePeking or the PI88788, be the
two native resistance.
We have BASF, we keep talkingabout the Levo, the BRFC
(17:18):
treatment that definitelyprovides, you know, very good
control all the way through.
It's not season long by anymeans, but definitely get that
first generation taken care ofand really get protected against
even some other diseases, likesudden death syndrome, which
typically goes hand in hand withsoybean cyst nematode, as we've
talked before.
But a good time to startevaluating how that works Really
(17:40):
.
That's the best one that's onthe market today as far as the
seed treatment.
There's some other ones thathave claims that they actually
have some control against it,but really do your due diligence
to look those up and understandthat.
And then really the next thingfrom a BISF perspective would be
, you know, pending regulatoryapproval, our new NIMS, which is
(18:03):
the first BT protein basicallytargeted to go against soybean
cyst nematode.
So that's really the big pieceof the puzzle that you know a
lot of irons in fire, a lot oftools that we're going to be
using.
So, nate, what do you haveAnything else to add on soybean
cyst nematode?
You've seen.
Speaker 4 (18:20):
I got a question for the two soybean experts here.
What are you seeing in nativetraits?
What kind of trends are youseeing with our native traits?
Why do we need this Nemispheretrait?
Speaker 2 (18:30):
So we're seeing the same thing in the native traits
as we're seeing with chemistrywhen you keep using the same
thing over and over and over, atolerance gets built up and the
efficacy is not working as much.
When it came in in the 2000swhen we had it the first culvers
, the pi 88788 you know it wasfantastic.
But if you look at that chartit is just slowly going down
(18:52):
with efficacy and they're justbuilding that up and it's a one
mode of action trait also.
That's what's so nice about thehemisphere coming up and built.
Add to this anything that Imiss or maybe misstated.
But once you bring thathemisphere in with the native
trait, those together, you havetwo modes of action.
So now you have two walls thereto hold them out and it's going
(19:14):
to be a step change in thenematode game coming forward.
Bill, anything to add?
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Yeah, just a couple things there.
So PI-8788, we've been usingthat and that's been the
dominant native trade.
We've really overused it.
So peaking everybody says, well, why not peaking?
Let's just switch everything topeaking, because that's the one
that's kind of the breedershave been able to use now more
recently and they had troublegetting it to yield previously.
(19:42):
So why not just switcheverything to peaking?
Well, it comes down tounderstanding the biology of the
nematode and really how theyfeed.
So really the PI-8788, reallywhat it does is it only kills
the females, if you will.
So that's the big thing, thepeaking.
They both will feed and theyboth will survive.
(20:04):
But the males actually get offand they kind of do their own
thing and then they survive, soon and so forth, and spread love
all the way around and at theend of the day you get a very
quick resistance developmentbecause of the ability for them
to cross, cross, breed veryquickly and get that resistance
development.
So I just tried to get thatreally short and sweet for the
(20:25):
not get really in depth witheverybody here today.
But at the end of the day we gotto rotate.
We got to make sure that we do.
If you plant corn, basically goto P88788, plant corn again and
then go to Peking and thenmakes you rotate those different
native traits.
Never plant Peking back to backis the key.
So we actually broke Peking atour research farm in Indiana in
(20:48):
three years and there's farmersthat maybe listen to our podcast
out in Indiana that haveexperienced this already where
they've done peaking, peaking,peaking and it doesn't work.
We've also got at one of ourresearch sites in Nevada that
the farmer there also switchedeverything to peaking and he's
(21:08):
seeing reduced yields from usingtoo much peaking.
So that's the big thing around.
The story is just understandthe biology and don't plant it
back to back.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah, it's going to be a game changer, that's for
darn sure.
Once it gets pending regulatoryapproval, once it comes out,
it's going to be a game changer.
So let's tweak back a littlebit.
We're getting here on soybeansand we want to hit a little bit
on corn here a little bit.
At the end, nate, what happensusually around the 20th, 21st of
(21:36):
June?
What goes on?
Our soybeans start to flower,start to flower.
One thing that we're going torun into every year depends on
where you're at white mold,right, we're going to be with
white mold soybeans and we knowthere's some management
practices.
Can you give us a little bit ofbackground on what white mold
(21:56):
is?
You know what are some of theconditions that makeASF that we
have to help that producer orthat customer help to fight some
of the white mold pressure thatcan be out there and help
minimize maybe some of thedamage we can see from it.
Speaker 4 (22:15):
You bet yeah.
So you know we've talked about,we've just gone through a
pretty warm spell, right, Dry,hot.
But if you look at the forecastat least the immediate forecast
the next 10 days, most ofgeography is going to experience
a lot of rain and ourtemperatures, especially in the
evenings, are going to get alittle more mild.
So that's going to favor allfungal pathogens, but one in
(22:36):
particular would be white moldthat we start thinking about
under these conditions.
So you need really adequatesoil moisture, right?
So white mold you know thesurvival structures for white
mold is those scleracea.
They look like rat droppings.
They can survive in the soilfor five to eight years until
they get the right conditions.
The right conditions are highsoil moisture, cool temperatures
(22:58):
and they produce apothecia,which is a little mushroom that
shoots the spores and they enterthe plant through the uh
blossoms as they begin todesiccate.
So that's when you need tostart thinking about white mold,
thinking about fungicideapplications on white mold.
As those plants bloom and asthat canopy closes.
(23:19):
Something we've learned fairlyrecently is what triggers those
apotheciates to produce sporesis a change in light wavelength.
So typically I would think,okay, canopy closure, right,
that could cause that.
But Bill has talked about firesmoke a couple times, if you
guys remember, jeff, especiallyin northeast Nebraska, I believe
it was 23.
In July we had fire smoke.
(23:40):
We had about a week of cooltemperatures, we weren't getting
rainfall but we were gettingheavy dews that persisted until
two or three in the afternoon.
All of a sudden, even innon-irrigated fields we had
reports of white mold, right.
So conditions we have this nextweek we've got plants that are
going to be flowering.
So you know if you're thinkingabout a fungicide, we have
Endura is a white moldspecialist, bosclid, it's SDHI,
(24:05):
and then we have a new onecalled Zarina, which is Endura,
plus Revisol, which is ourblockbuster, trizol.
That's in a lot of our productstogether.
As far as timing, that is thetrick with white mold when you
make a fungicide application,you only protect the blossoms
present at the time of theapplication, and you guys know
(24:25):
so it means blossom for 50 to 60days, right?
So when we talk timing, firstwe're looking for blossoms, but
then I want to start looking atsoil moisture and how close we
are to row closure.
As we get close to row closureand maybe get closer to R2, r1
plus a week, we want to get asmany blossoms as we can and hit
those beans right when the rowcloses, and that's probably our
(24:48):
best bet, uh, to have goodperformance out of those
fungicides and control whitemold yeah, yeah, no, that's and
that's something we're going todeal with.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
And, bill, you know we talk about white mold.
You know nate brought up 2023and yeah, we had fields, just
dry line fields.
I remember walking through themat three in the afternoon and
you were soaked and it's likewhat's going on, um, but then we
didn't have it last year.
You know, white mold actuallylast year was lining up pretty
good too for white moldinfestation.
You know that r1, r2, we werewet and cloudy.
(25:19):
I remember fourth of julyeverybody thought, hey, I'm
gonna have a four-day weekendbecause it's on fourth, is on a
thursday, and it was like 65degrees and rainy and miserable,
right, and nobody enjoyedfourth of July camping.
But you know we were sittinghere going, all right, it's
gonna be a lot of white mold out.
We didn't see it anywhere.
Okay, what's?
What's your expectation forwhite mold this year?
What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (25:40):
yeah, yeah, my thoughts right now definitely
for the northern part of Iowa,the northern southern part of
Minnesota, for sure, in myopinion, definitely going to be
a pretty good year for them,right, wrong or indifferent for
looking at.
I think there's going to beparts of the entire Midwest
they're going to have it,especially as you get further
east.
They've got a lot more moistureout there.
(26:00):
So I think you get into thatnorthern Illinois, indiana,
southern Wisconsin, all the waythrough over to Michigan and
Northern Ohio.
You get in through that.
I think there's going to be apretty good chance that they
have it as well, because I thinkthey've got, as we go back to
the yield triangle, you knowwe've got the disease triangle
right.
So you've got the host, you'vegot the pathogen, you've got the
environment.
So I think those three factorsare going to align for sure.
(26:27):
I think in the southern part ofIowa I don't know that we're
going to get as much as what wehave.
There might be some southeastIowa that might get some, as we
continue to see that one movingsouth in Iowa, for example.
But I think we're maybe just atick too dry and I don't think
we're quite going to be canopiedin a lot of areas where I think
we typically would have been.
I think some of the early beans, like you mentioned, jeff,
they're getting closer to canopy.
When I say early, that's earlyApril that we're planting, I
(26:48):
think there's some potentialthere.
but I think we got to as long asyou think this through and you
kind of planned accordingly andadjusted your row spacing and
widened that up and potentiallylowered your population and or
selected a variety that has areally high white mold tolerance
.
I think those are all thethings that are important that
you got to review and this is agood time to review your
(27:09):
decisions and adjust yourmanagement practices going
forward.
But, like Nate said, you knowthere's some definitely some key
fungicides that can be used outthere and there's some others
that are quite a lot of claimsyou know, definitely dig into
them to make sure that they havethe control that you're looking
for.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yeah, and oh, by the way, nate, we were talking in
2023, it was bad.
And then you made the commentthe rat droppings sit there for
five to eight years, right?
Yep?
Well, it was ever bad in 23, orbeans again this year.
So you know products thereright now.
If the environment hits, wecould see a lot of it in those
(27:48):
spots.
So, no great comments, greatinformation, guys.
So you know, this has basicallybeen focused as a bean
conversation.
It's called Spilling the Beansfor that reason.
But you know, we wanted to turnand go a little bit in the corn.
We like to eat corn once in awhile because, you know, a lot
of our listeners are, you know,plant a lot of corn too.
You know we've heard a dirtylittle word the last week come
(28:09):
around.
It's called tar spot and beenlast week.
Phones have been blowing up.
You look at that tar spot mapthat they put out there, all
these counties.
You know Nebraska we're seeingit here, where we didn't even
think about it.
Now it's already in the middlepart of the state.
They're finding it on V8, v9corn.
So, nate, this is where yourexpertise comes into.
(28:29):
So could you talk to ourcustomers, our producers and our
individuals who are listening.
Could you kind of give themsome of the background?
What is tar spot?
Why are we seeing it and whatcan we see for losses and what
can we do as a preventativemeasure to help minimize some of
that damage?
Because it is for a lot of usit is a new thing that we've
(28:50):
never dealt with before, andthere's some products out there
that work really good on it andthere's some that don't.
So we want to make sure thatwe're spending our dollars
wisely, the way we're doing itand getting the best bang for
our dollars.
So you know I'm going to sitback me and Bill are going to
sit back and let you take awayhere for a few minutes, because
this is really down your chutehole there.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
All right, yeah, appreciate it, appreciate the
time.
I think tar spot is going to bea big deal this year.
Jeff, you mentioned that we'reseeing it well into the central
part of Nebraska earlier than weever have under pivot
irrigation.
That's something I'm going tobe watching closely because
we've had it in those areas, butit has come in very late, um,
so this year it got a startearly enough.
(29:29):
I think it will.
It may have a major impact.
So real quick background tarspot is a fairly new disease
showed up in 2015 in Illinoisand Indiana.
Um, it's a South Americandisease.
It's been a corn disease downthere, uh, since the early 1900s
.
Um, down there is actually twopathogens.
We just have one of thosepathogens up here, so it's
obviously it's changed a littlebit.
(29:50):
How it got up here, we don'tknow for sure.
There's some theories out there.
I'm not going to go into thosetoday, but filichloromatis is
the pathogen.
It's obligate biotroph right,so it requires a living host,
which is obviously corn.
So some things that are uniqueto tar spot that we don't see in
(30:12):
some of our other fungalpathogens is it's so prolific,
right?
It cycles continuously if youhave the right environment.
So what you need to get tarspot development.
It overwinters in a residueright once you've had it
development.
It overwinters in a residueright once you've had it um in
the spring.
I, the going theory and Iagreed to this theory is you
need a hard rain in june, splashit up and then you need to
(30:34):
continue to have rain in coolertemperatures.
Uh, only need seven hours ofleaf wetness.
But once you start seeing thoselittle specks, those tar spot
um uh lesions, those start topump out spores and it's
Ascomycetes.
The nickname for that type offungi is the spore shooting
fungi.
I actually have a video wherewe've taken a leaf and put it
(30:57):
under a microscope and you cansee that lesion just sitting
there going boop, boop, boop,pumping out spores.
So that's why this disease whenwe have the right conducive
environment, right, lots of cool, wet days, heavy dues when this
pathogen gets going, it can bevery serious.
The other thing is the latentperiod on tar spot.
This is not a disease where youwant to sit back and wait until
(31:19):
you see it.
The latent period can be up to20 days.
So I just found my first tarspot lesion in Madison County,
iowa, last week, last Monday,and that tells me that that
plant was infected.
Mid to late May is when thatplant is a B7 plant because you
don't see those lesions tillthat latent period's up.
(31:40):
So lots of times you know, wehear on fungal, on corn diseases
, a lot of uh even say don'tspray until you see disease.
Tar spots not one where youwant to do that, you want to be
proactive now.
As far as timing, if you see itearly, should you spray early?
I don't think so at this point.
Maybe you'll get aggressiveenough someday where I'm going
(32:00):
to tell you to do that.
But typically I'm going to saytry and get close to that vt,
that tassassel, right.
As you guys know, when cornplants develop, once they hit VT
they're done putting out leaves.
They're not like soybeans,right?
So all the leaves that thatplant is going to use to produce
that year are present.
And as that plant shifts itsfocus from building the plant to
filling grain, right, it's gotthe factory built.
(32:23):
Now it's going to produce theproduct.
It's going to produce thatgrain.
All of its energy goes intothat.
So those plants are reallysusceptible to fungal pathogens
at that point.
So my recommendation is, ifyou've had a history of tar spot
, plan a fungicide applicationat VT.
The other thing to keep in mindis for the folks that sit back
and don't get scheduled withyour aerial applicator or your
(32:44):
applicator when tar spot blowsup a lot of people.
If you're not already on thelist, your corn might not get
sprayed until R3.
I've seen it happen.
I think we're set up for thatto happen this year.
So be prepared, have a plan.
Veltema fungicide from us is agreat product.
It has headline amp in it,which gives us some great
(33:06):
disease control as well as planthealth characteristics, and
then Revisol our new triazole,which has unsurpassed disease
control.
Some things I like to tellpeople.
If you've had a history of tarspot, you're worried about it.
Our environment definitely islining up.
Seven ounces of L-team would bethe base rate.
You can go up to 10.
I did a trial last year thatreally showed under tar spot
(33:29):
pressure.
It came in kind of late lastyear but we had decent pressure.
That, going from seven to 10,increased our ROI by $25 an acre
and that includes the cost offungicide, everything.
You're not incurring anotherapplication cost like you are.
If you come back again, you'rejust going up three ounces.
It was a very nice return Nowcould we get into situations
(33:50):
where we need more than oneapplication, especially under
pivot irrigation.
We might find that out this yearbecause that pivot it's such a
conducive environment for thetar spot In Michigan.
What they found is under pivotirrigation tar spot just shifts
to a whole new gear.
It's just a whole other animal.
So we haven't found out yet inNebraska because it hasn't come
(34:11):
early until this year.
So we may see in Nebraska thisyear we might have to hit it
again with another applicationof fungicide.
We're in the learning periodright now, but I would say for
sure, if you're worried, bumpthat first application.
Up to 10 ounces of Veltemawould be my recommendation.
Okay, Okay.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
So I was out in the field the other day and I found
tar spot.
I looked at him hey, I found atar spot, and then I licked my
thumb and it worked off.
Okay, I've got several caseswhere, um, you know, people
thought it was tar spot.
It's not.
You know, give a little quicklittle background on on.
(34:51):
Does it wipe off?
Does it what does it wipe off?
I mean, how do you know?
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Okay, so what you're looking for is a spec that'll
kind of look like you know a flypoop, right, um?
But like you said, jeff, canyou rub it off with your
thumbnail?
If you can rub it off, thenit's.
It's not tar spot.
If it's tar spot, it'll likelybe irregular shaped.
It won't be you know a perfectcircular oval.
(35:15):
Lots of times they're kind ofalmost diamond shaped looking.
It'll be raised when you rubyour finger over it.
It won't rub off and it'll beraised up on the leaf.
If you turn that leaf over,you'll be able to see it from
the backside too.
If you can meet all thosequalifications, then you've
probably found tar spot.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Yeah, and we highly recommend too that if you are
out in the field and you thinkyou found it, send a sample into
your university.
Let's get that, let's get thatverified, that that's what we're
looking out there for.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
So Bill, you know what do you have to add?
I've been, yeah, so you knowI've gone out there.
I'm walking through my fieldsand I find it and I'm like bam.
I found on this corn hybrid.
But I go to the next one.
I didn't find this corn hybrid.
Are there differences in cornhybrids?
So what can you tell us there?
Speaker 4 (36:01):
Yeah, there are, just like, you know, we found with
Northern corn leaf blight.
I don't know if anybodyremembers 2015.
I'm not going to name any names, but there were a particular
hybrid of one company where, ifyou were driving down the road
at 60 miles per hour, you'relike, oh yeah, that's that
hybrid, because you could tellit was sick.
Right, tar spot's the same way.
You know the breeders arestarting to try and you know,
(36:24):
look at it and take that intoaccount, but I don't think we'll
probably ever be able to breedour way out of tar spot.
It's just such an aggressivedisease.
Certainly, you know it can helphaving a more tolerant hybrid.
But if you have idealconditions, you have a ton of
inoculum around.
You probably still are going toneed to spray a fungicide.
(36:44):
But you know and I didn't getinto losses that we can see with
tar spot, I guess you knowwe've seen 50 bushel plus losses
in the eastern corn belt.
Once you have it, you knowenough of knocking where you're
getting it early, um, and again,you add irrigation to that.
We may learn some things thisyear right in nebraska, uh, when
it comes to tar spots.
So definitely one that to keepyour eyes on this year.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Absolutely, absolutely yeah, how about?
How far north is it going?
Is it up in south dakota?
Is in minnesota?
Where's where's that?
Speaker 4 (37:13):
yeah it's, it's up in South Dakota.
It's not this year yet, but Iexpect it.
We'll see it fairly soon upthere.
You know they're probably justa little bit further behind as
far as plant stage.
I'd never heard of it earlierthan about V8.
I found it in V7 corn.
We had a rep find it in V4 cornthis this year, which is crazy,
(37:34):
scary.
So that's what I'm saying rightnow.
I probably won't recommend thatyou try and make a fungicide
application before vt.
But I'm leaving that windowopen because as we learn more
about this disease, as we getmore local inoculum I call it
homegrown tar spot, where you'regetting it from the residue in
the field, not having to waitfor it to blow in we may adjust
(37:57):
those recommendations down theroad someday so it's pretty much
safe to say that if you growcorn, the potentials it's coming
.
It's just a matter of not if,but when yeah, the ability that
of it to spread, especially 21,22, 23 western corn belt dry,
dry, drought years.
But we saw it first in sixcounties, I believe in 21 in
(38:19):
nebraska, and then we jumped upto 30 some and then 40.
Some came in late but even in asevere drought, going against
the predominant wind, we saw itspread.
So this is like I said it's,it's got some unique
characteristics, very aggressivedisease.
Speaker 2 (38:37):
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
Great information.
Shift gears one second.
So, as we think about tar spot,you know just we're not going
to go in details on it, but namea few other diseases we got to
be watching for in corn, andthen name a few other diseases
we got to be watching for insoybeans, then name a few other
diseases we got to be watchingfor in soybeans.
Let's kind of wrap it up withthat.
And then quick recommendationis it veltema or revitec?
(38:59):
Which way would you go on eachof those?
So just wrap it up okay, so.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
So, as I, as I said earlier, you know, looking at
our forecast, at least in thenext 10 days, cooler, especially
evening temps are going to getback cool.
We've been kind of high lately.
We're going to get back tothose moderate, more moderate.
We're going to get back cool.
We've been kind of high lately.
We're going to get back tothose moderate, more moderate.
We're going to have lots ofleaf wetness, lots of moisture.
We've already had some firesmoke, all these fungal
pathogens, like overcast skies,right, even beyond white mold.
(39:25):
They all prefer overcast.
So other things I'm thinkingabout in corn northern corn leaf
blight.
I mentioned 2015.
That was a year we had a lot ofmoisture in july, so let's see
what the forecast does.
Um, that could be one.
We see gray leaf spot justabout every year.
Um, it likes heat right,shorter latent period needs the
moisture, but it, you know, 85degrees won't shut it down.
(39:48):
80 degrees will shut downnorthern corn leaf blight tar
spot.
We think darcy toinka, umpathologist at purdue, believes
once you get the initialinfection, moisture is the most
important thing.
If temperature goes up, you'renot necessarily going to shut
down tar spot if you keepgetting moisture.
That's her belief.
So they all act a littledifferent.
The great thing is we've gotveltema fungicide corn.
(40:11):
We also have revitec.
You can use either, but Veltimais my go-to in corn.
It works on all these diseases.
We have some of the longestresidual out there with that
Revisol component.
A VT application goes a longways to protecting that corn
yield.
The other thing with tar spotis when you have other pathogens
pile on top of it.
It's not a one plus one right,it's a multiplier.
(40:34):
We can see real devastation.
So that's the other thing tokeep in mind.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I've already seen some anthracnose in my tar spot
plot, where I found tar spot.
Speaker 4 (40:44):
So I've already got two pathogens going in there,
right.
So keep all those things inmind.
Watch this forecast.
Soybeans we've got Revitek.
You start thinking aboutSceptoria, brown spot, frog eye
leaf spot.
You know revitech is great onall those products.
It's got that sdhi component,that xemium component, along
with the headline and therevisol.
Another side of action aroundthose soybean diseases works
(41:05):
really well.
I usually want to see thatabout r3.
A reason for timing on that isyou know, 60 of your yield and
soybeans comes from that middlethird of the canopy.
When you get to R3, that partof the canopy is developed there
to receive that application.
We know those beans are goingto put on some more leaves but
those are the most importantones to protect yield.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Anything you guys want to add on the soybean side
of things.
No, yeah, you're spot on andyou know.
To add that onto the corn too,the northern corn leaf blight
has been showing up this weekand there is a lot more
anthracnose out in these cornfields that farmers realize this
year from that later may, earlypart of june, weather that we
had.
So we have the you know, withthe triangles there and we're
(41:49):
starting to see it bill.
You have anything to to addbefore we sign out?
Speaker 3 (41:53):
yeah, no, I, I think, uh, you know a lot of good
stuff here with nate.
Uh, a lot, a lot of stuff tounpack here as you think through
it's that.
It's that busy time of theseason when we're all out
scouting.
You know, we're busy runningaround and looking at a lot of
different things are going outthere in the field.
So again, keep your eyes open.
If you don't know what it is,call, call.
You know, send a sample in.
(42:15):
You know, give us a call orgive your rep a call.
Whoever you work with, you know, just ask for help and
hopefully we can figure outwhat's going on out there.
And you know, I've had morecalls and actually got some
potassium deficiency going on inIowa all of a sudden.
Never even seen that for a longtime.
Go figure that out.
But again, it's that moistureand and, uh, not very mobile
nutrient and a lot of things.
(42:35):
So you get get a lot ofquestions of what is this right?
So, so definitely reach outthere.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
So with that.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
That's all I got for Nate and, uh, we'll kind of let
Nate roll and we can close herup.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Thanks so much, great information.
Really appreciate you takingthe time.
Thanks guys.
Speaker 1 (42:48):
See you later.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Well, bill, we, uh, uh, we unwrapped a lot of things
in today's episode, you know,and it is.
You know, you're talking busytime, we're talking fungicides.
We're talking, you know, theinsecticides.
We're talking diseases we couldsee.
Oh, by the way, we're still gotpeople trying to finish up with
post and corn post and soybeans, uh, trying to get their
fertilizer put on either too dryor liquid.
There's all these things thatyou know.
(43:13):
We're just such a busy timeright now, so I hope everybody's
being safe out there.
But you know what was, what was?
A couple really key points didyou take away from today's
conversation with Nate?
Speaker 3 (43:24):
Yeah, no, a lot, a lot of a lot of key points that
you know.
We've got a pretty long episodehere so we'll go through all of
them.
But at the end of the day, youknow, you think about, you know
tolerance, I think abouttolerant corn hybrids and
tolerant soybean varieties.
Definitely, you know, I alwayslike to say it starts with the
seeds.
Definitely, get that figuredout.
And then there's thesemanagement things we can do
(43:44):
afterwards and we can reallylook at.
You know the differentfungicides and different rates
and different timings.
You know, and everything thatNate said there was spot on.
You know, and everything thatNate said there was spot on.
So you know the, the tar spot,you know, learn a little bit
more about it and kind of, youknow big time South America that
has got, you know, twodifferent genes, if you will
(44:04):
down there, two differentcomponents, and we only got the
one up here.
So thank God for that.
We only got the one, I guess,if you call that a thankful
thing.
So, but you know we talkedabout, you know, the soybean
cyst, nematodes, gall midge.
You know those, those.
You know what that's going onthere.
We got a lot of work to do onthat one in the industry to
really take, you know, after agall midge, and you know BASF
we're doing a lot of work thereon SCN, so we're definitely, you
know, focused on that one, butthis gall type pest is where it
(44:26):
seems to be honed in, right nowat least.
So, yeah, tar spot, wow, what adisease and what a devastating
one that we've got to continueto understand and learn more
about and how to manage and helpour customers do that.
Speaker 2 (44:46):
So how about you?
Speaker 3 (44:47):
Jeff, what did you pick up today?
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Yeah, just real quickly.
You hit on a lot of things, butyou know the reality of it is
white mold and tar spot.
It's here to stay.
Once you have it, you're goingto have it.
So it's all comes down to keymanagement practices.
You know I'm a firm believer ina fungicide.
Never you always break even onworst case scenario with the
fungicide application.
You know you always get areturn on investment.
(45:10):
The worst would be a break even.
It's managing to protect thatcrop, to maximize the yield you
have out there.
But one thing we do know is thatonce we get something figured
out, mother nature throws usanother curve ball and we go
back to step one.
So again, just be diligent andunderstand what's going on in
your fields and utilize thatopportunity.
(45:32):
If a fungicide can protect youfrom that, especially like a tar
spot, you know, get it outthere because it's going to be
important, because the yielddevastation you can see with
some of these diseases is reallyhuge.
So, with that being said, yeah,we've rambled on quite a bit
here, but a lot of goodinformation and a lot of good
information that can be utilizedyet Right.
(45:52):
So we still incorporateinformation that can be utilized
yet right.
So we can still incorporate.
So, with that being said, meand Bill, we just want to thank
you for joining us again todayon this episode of Spilling the
Beans.
We invite you to download theGrow Smart Live app for more
resources and share this podcastwith other growers.
So for myself and from Bill,please be safe out there, stay
cool and make it a great day.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
Thanks for joining us on spilling the beans, where
every episode gets you one stepcloser to maximizing your
soybean profitability.
If you found today's insightsvaluable, subscribe and leave us
a review on your favoriteplatform.
Download the grow smart liveapp for more resources and share
the podcast with other growers.
See you next week with moreexpert tips to help you grow
(46:35):
smarter and achieve the bestyields yet.
Liberty Outlook, zidua, ziduaPro, poncho Potivo, precise,
endura, rivitec, fastax, cs,elevo, vault, ip Plus, relenia,
dryaxor, liberty Ultra areregistered trademarks of BASF.
Nemisphere, zorina and Vorexorare trademarks of BASF.
Enlist, enlist One, enlist Duoand Enlist E3 are registered
(46:55):
trademarks of Corteva AgritiansLLC.
The transgenic event in EnlistE3 soybeans is jointly developed
and owned by Corteva AgritiansLLC and MS Technologies LLC.
Chitavo is a registeredtrademark of MS Technologies and
(47:24):
exclusively distributed by BASF.
All other trademarks are theproperty of their respective
owners, and use of any suchtrademark does not imply any
affiliation with orTranscription by CastingWords
provided for educationalpurposes only and is not
intended to promote the sale ofthis product.
Any sale of this product afterregistration is obtained shall
be based solely on the EPAapproved product label and any
claims regarding product safetyand efficacy shall be addressed
solely by the label.
The views expressed by BASFemployees and guests are their
own and do not necessarilyreflect the views of BASF.
(47:45):
Growsmart is a registeredtrademark of BASF.
Copyright 2025 BASF Corporation.
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Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.