Seasonal fungicide review

Oct 04, 2021

There wasn’t much foliar disease in corn or soybeans this year, a field agronomist said

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

Some producers may not have encountered lots of foliar disease this year, but it didn’t prevent them from applying fungicides when necessary.

This is because commodity prices supported these kinds of investment decisions, said Meaghan Anderson, an extension field agronomist with Iowa State University.

“There’s always fungicide use for preserving plant health or concerns for disease,” she said. “And given the crop prices this year and how they rebounded from last summer, I think that helped farmers feel more confident about investing in a fungicide.”

In corn, farmers generally sprayed for gray leaf spot and tar spot.

And soybean farmers applied fungicides for multiple diseases Anderson said.

“The big one in soybeans is always frogeye leaf spot,” she told Farms.com. “But I would say we had a number of other disease issues in soybeans.”

These include white mold, sudden death syndrome, and brown rot.

Were the fungicide applications a worthwhile investment in 2021?

It may still be too early to tell, Anderson said.

“We’ve harvested a lot of crops here, but I don’t think we’ve had the opportunity to sit down and identify how the fungicide did on a particular hybrid or variety,” she said.

Central Iowa, where Anderson is based, had a mostly dry year.

In June, for example, about 40 percent of the state experienced moderate or severe drought.

Despite a relative lack of moisture, farmers applied fungicides because the potential for disease is always there, Anderson said.

“This is where the disease triangle comes in,” she said. “The pathogen needs to be present, and for most of them they are surviving on the soil. You need a susceptible crop, and we’re always growing corn and soybeans here, which are susceptible. And then you need the weather conditions, and each pathogen prefers different conditions.”

Planning for potential fungicide use next year can begin now.

Producers should engage with their dealers about different hybrids and varieties, Anderson said.

“Do you need to talk to your seed dealer to find out what they know about underlying tolerance and if there’s a better option for you? Fungicides are a great tool we have but they’re not our first line of defense. Planning hybrids and varieties now is a good start.”

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”