Anderson: Growers gird for arrival of soybean rust

[Tweed]

http://www.pantagraph.com/stories/020205/bus_20050202008.shtml

"In the race to prepare for a possible invasion of soybean rust this spring, growers are learning to identify the disease, review crop insurance coverage and follow a set of steps to get suspect leaves analyzed.

They'll also need to figure out how to get the most bang for their spray buck. Scott Bretthauer, University of Illinois Extension application technology specialist, has a few words of wisdom to offer.

Bretthauer admits more research needs to be done, but Illinois soybean growers can take a lesson from South American counterparts who regularly spray fungicides to control rust.

Lesson 1 -- Droplet size is critical, said Bretthauer. Large droplets tend to bounce or run off plants. And fewer droplets reduce coverage."

[illflem]

1. I work in Ag research

many researchers believe rust was introduced on purpose, possibly by terrorists. Apparently al Queda documents seized in Afghanistan detail this mode of attack on the US food supply. It showed up all of the sudden in the middle of the country, most introduced pests come in around the edges.
Another pest that recently popped up and that is spreading like wildfire is the potato tuber moth. Previously only found in the tropics this very destructive, hard to control insect all the sudden showed up in southern WA and eastern OR about the same time as rust.

Don't think anyone will ever really know how these pests made their way here.

[TheFarseer]

3. this was covered by the presentation I saw

(see my post below) Soybean rust is carried mainly by weather. Our presenter seemed pretty satisfied that the hurricane that hit Louisiana or Mississippi or whatever it was carried it in from Venezuela and then it basically spread up the Mississippi river.

[TheFarseer]

2. I went to a chemical company sponsored meeting about this

The gist of the meeting was that, for soybean growers in Nebraska anyways, soybean rust will not get here until late this year and in fact, may never have a big impact because normal conditions in Nebraska are too hot and dry for soybean rust to thrive. This might be bad for producers in other cooler or wetter parts of the country. He never covered that. Furthermore, I've heard that farmers in Brazil might be switching to cotton production because of rust and also high production costs for soybeans. So this might actually work out well for some farmers - too early to tell.

[illflem]

4. Rust is the reason many new varieties are being developed

for northern climates. It's been the thrust of lots of new research here in Montana where soybeans have never been grown before. We're now getting yields higher than the mid-west.