Tar Spot, Rust, and Red Crown Rot: The 2025 Disease Verdict with Dr. Dean Malvick
Good day and welcome to the University of Minnesota Extension CropCast. I'm your host Dave Nicolai, University of Minnesota Extension Educator in Field Crops and I'm joined today with my co host Doctor. Seth Nave, University of Minnesota Extension soybean specialist. And Seth, it's been a little while since we've gotten together like this but the weather started to change in terms of getting a little bit cooler but how has your summer been so far and how's your fall been in harvest?
Speaker 2:It's had a nice summer. We had good rains and so the crop looked pretty fantastic all year for the most part and so it was good to get out around the country and harvest some soybean plots this fall and get to check out a lot of sites from the truck window as I drove around. So I didn't get into as many fields as I would like to, but certainly saw a lot of action out there and talked to a handful of farmers about what they were seeing.
Dave Nicolai:Great. Well, today we've invited in a special guest because we want to kind of wrap up this 2025 field crop season particularly when we talk about corn and soybeans. And as our special guest is Doctor. Dean Melvik, he's University of Minnesota Extension Plant Pathologist specializing in corn and soybean. So good morning Dean.
Speaker 3:Good morning. It's good to
Dave Nicolai:be here today. All right, we want to talk a little bit about the cropping season as we've just passed and of course your interest is looking at what the impact might have had in terms of important diseases and maybe some not so important but on the horizon on in terms of corn and soybeans. So I'm going to just plunge right in here Seth if that's okay with you and bring up the topic on corn. And this year we were faced with something with I think it's rather unusual in all my years here of living in Minnesota that I haven't really seen before. I've seen rust on corn you know from time to time.
Dave Nicolai:But never really this amount of rust that comes into the state of Minnesota. So Dean, you want to talk a little bit about this southern rust and its effect here and really what happened in 2025?
Speaker 3:Sure, this would be a good topic to discuss here. Before we get into it, want to remind everyone this season, now everybody can remember that pretty clearly, had a lot of rain, we had a lot of warm temperatures, we had a lot of humidity. All these factors have a big part to play in how much disease and which diseases we saw. And so when we don't have those conditions in another year, you know, the disease situation will definitely be different. And so just always keep that in mind.
Speaker 3:I think those of you that work a lot in the field, you're very aware of that. But you know, what we saw this year won't necessarily predict what we see next year.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe we could back up a little bit. We kind of rushed through beginning of this, and we talked about the season. I think that let's just talk about the crop and what we saw for crop. We had warm temperatures and abundant rainfall and regular rainfall events in most areas. Of course, there was spots that got missed by rains in August and September, but for the most part we had pretty regular rains with warm temperatures.
Speaker 2:And what does that drive? That drives really good plant growth. And so the fields, the crops, corn and soybean, looks really good from, you know, the window as we were driving by. You know? But even in the late August, I already heard people talking about, well, it looks like a good yield, but I'm sure the disease is going to take the top off of this thing.
Speaker 2:And so I think we I think that's kind of we used to just talk about the crop, and I think farmers are sophisticated enough to know the impact that these diseases are having. And so they're already starting to kind of tick some of those bushels off just based on some of that reoccurring rain we had. So do you think that's what happened this year?
Speaker 3:Yes, you're hitting on some really good points. You know corn is an amazingly resilient crop and in Minnesota we've traditionally had not a lot of problems with leaf diseases. That has changed in recent years. You know, and a few that we've dealt with in past, they all came roaring back this year and some new ones as Dave mentioned. So the top of the heap in terms of the one that was most significant probably across much of the southern part of the state anyway, even though it reached further north, southern rust on corn.
Speaker 3:Now many of you know that there are two different types of rust that we often see on corn. One is called common rust and that one we see almost every year and we have for decades. It usually causes minimal problems partly because when it by the time it arrives here in Minnesota and let me stop there a moment rusts don't overwinter here in the state. They have to be blown from the Southern part of The US where they can overwinter on living hosts. So by the time the spores get blown up here, you know in the early to mid summer, often the temperature gets too warm for common rust.
Speaker 3:So once it gets above 80 degrees, common rust doesn't do well. And it kind of shuts down on corn. Whereas the other rust on corn called southern rust, that's exactly the kind of conditions that favors it. Temperature Temperature is around 80 degrees or even a little higher in high humidity. Of course we had a lot of that this year.
Speaker 3:Now stepping back, you heard Dave say a moment ago that there was an unusual amount of rust on corn this year. I'll say there was last year as well. Southern rust is a relatively new problem that we're dealing with at the scale we've been seeing at the last two years. It's not brand new in the state, we've been seeing it and reporting it for a number of years, but at the levels we've seen it the last two years is very unusual. So, and again it's something that's gotten a lot of attention and for good reason.
Speaker 3:It's definitely probably caused some yield loss in some fields.
Dave Nicolai:Do you have any comments about the life cycle? I think you started in talking a little bit about that, but maybe that's a good basis for this discussion. Yeah, the key point, the
Speaker 3:start of course is again, it doesn't survive here. It has to be blown up from the South. And we can generally see a progression of development on corn states to our South. For example they saw substantial amounts in Kansas and Iowa you know earlier than we did. Again the disease kind of marches northward in a way and really develops further south before it reaches here and develops high levels.
Speaker 3:So that's the first thing. And the other, that's so called polycyclic disease, meaning it initially infects those initial infections then develop lesions on the leaves that then generate more spores, which then results in more and more damage. And so that we need to have those secondary cycles happen. So we need to have the disease come early enough under the right conditions to really cause significant problems.
Speaker 2:So do you think do you think there's wherever, you know, inoculum limited? Or is there always this kind of rain of the inoculum coming up from the south? We have south winds every summer. Is there always inoculum around to get things going and then we either do or do not have the right weather? Or sometimes we get a lot of spores and sometimes we don't.
Speaker 3:I think it's sometimes we get a lot, sometimes we don't. But again, the disease doesn't develop to those states to the south of us unless the conditions are appropriate there either. So you need a progression of development of the disease, need the right weather conditions to our south as well.
Speaker 2:So we're getting spores from corn within this polycyclic system from the southern, just south of us as well.
Speaker 3:We are.
Speaker 2:When we hear about a lot of this going in Iowa then it's you know it could could show up here in a few days or a few weeks in Minnesota I suppose.
Speaker 3:That's correct.
Dave Nicolai:So are there some rumors that you want to put to bed here in terms of next year? Things that we should think about from the standpoint that because we had an infection in here, residue, does it need the living host here, you just want to talk a little bit about that for planning purposes and it really leads into management and we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's a good point. So what does the situation this year help? How does that help us understand what we should do next year? You know, doesn't. What happened this year doesn't really predict in any way how much southern rust we would have next year.
Speaker 3:So that's a really key point to keep in mind. But we learned some things. We learned things the last two years. This is a disease we need to watch. It can reach higher levels here in Minnesota than we would have ever suspected previously, I think.
Speaker 3:We've never seen levels previous at we've never seen the same levels that we've seen in the last two years previously. So we know that there are differences in hybrids. We saw some real big differences among some of them. And so even if they're not clearly rated for the level of resistance, you know, and some of them are, but that's something to look for. Fungicides certainly can be effective if they're applied at the right time and in the right way.
Speaker 3:So we need to pay attention, we need to get products on if we need them. Ideally we'd put more resistant hybrids out if they're available. But again, we don't know if this disease is going to be significant last year. The last two years don't predict what will happen in 2026.
Speaker 2:But farmers need to keep an eye on it. So I'll give you an anecdote and you can I think it's kind of a complicated one? Maybe it's maybe it's very simple. I don't know. Seemed complicated to me, but I had a farmer tell me that all their early hybrids just got nailed by Southern Rust this year, and their later ones were fine.
Speaker 2:Do you think this is a genetic question because their later ones were probably different set of genetics in their early hybrids? Or do you think that it was just a timing of these infections and spores and and the environment at that that early stage versus the late stage? And then how would a farmer that those farmers, for instance, how do they use that information? Do they try to stay away from those early hybrids, or or do they just assume timing is gonna be different? Or what do you what do you think about that?
Speaker 3:You know there's no absolute clear answer here just getting the question here for the first time is we don't know anything about those hybrids in terms of their resistance. You know the resistance level in them could have made a real difference here. On the other hand, having this disease developing later in the season when it tends to develop on a crop that's a little bit younger, such as a more full season crop, a later maturing crop, could increase the problem. So if we can get a crop in and out more quickly, we'd likely reduce problems with this disease. As we likely would with tar spot, another disease we'll talk about.
Dave Nicolai:So I had an opportunity to go to Rochester, Minnesota this last in August and it was the end of the tour of the Pro crop tour that go across The United States and there were representatives from other states, the Southern states, who adamantly stood up and preached about the need, it wasn't too late for fungicides and situation with that. And I go back to Seth's point about the crops development stage at the onset of infection here. And even just anecdotal, of course we don't have anything about, you know, a lot of it is well anecdotal but the difference between oh, that Olmsted County area and Southern and I-ninety versus farther north to the Twin Cities and to Rosemont. And it appeared on that thinking process that the differences in terms of where those corn plants were at. I mean the folks down south obviously, infection occurred much earlier, occurred much later here as we've gotten, you know, farther to the north with that.
Dave Nicolai:Can you comment on that and then also there were some observations about the lower portion of the corn plants and the lower leaves showing more symptomology. Now I don't know necessarily infection but I mean just from in terms of visual symptomology with that. And the fact that you know farther, we probably still are talking you know well over 200 bushels on an acre in a lot of our what I call our more northern areas. Comments about that and in terms of that, that I'm thinking about also this whole business on going back and with and timing from a fungicide standpoint. And we have a pretty narrow window here obviously and what we know from a research in Minnesota.
Dave Nicolai:So there's a lot
Speaker 3:of things. You're to unpack that suitcase? Yes, Dave. You brought up a lot of things, Yes.
Dave Nicolai:You know,
Speaker 3:I think one central element is maybe when is it too late to get a high rate of return, likely rate of return on a fungicide application if we think the disease is going to be severe enough to warrant an application. Roughly the reproductive stage R3 is generally sort of the edging out beyond that the benefits tend to go down. And that's I think that's the key thing there is we if we could control a disease at that point, we should generally have adequate protection through the end of that season. Every situation is a little different but that's kind of a general rule. You know R4 is probably the absolute end when anybody should ever consider a fungicide application for whether it's southern rust or tar spot or northern corn leaf blight another problem we had this year.
Speaker 2:So just, you know, in my limited vocabulary, we talk in soybean with long a lot, we talk about protective versus curative kind of fungicidal applications. And where do you do you put these sorts of fungicides in terms of rust control?
Speaker 3:They are most effective if they are put on before the disease gets to high levels. Have better protective properties than curative. Although some of them do have some curative efficacy. But they definitely work best if you get them on before a lot of infection occurs.
Speaker 2:So Dave had another question, and I'm even going to complicate it some more. He's talking about lower leaves. And of course, the first thing that came to my mind with lower leaves is, oh my, what's going to happen with all these short corn if everybody starts producing these these corn hybrids that have exactly the same number of leaves as a traditional corn, but they're two two or three feet shorter and just all compacted with narrow, internode lengths and things like that. What's what are those what's that kind of microclimate going to do for for these kind of leaf borne diseases?
Speaker 3:I think we have to learn more about the shorter hybrids and how they're going to react disease. We're certainly learning some. And this whole idea of where the disease developed on the plants, I saw it too on my own research plots in other fields. A lot of Southern rust on lower leaves and a tremendous amount of inconsistency. You can look at one leaf, it's 50% covered by rust pustules, damaged.
Speaker 3:Leaf right next to it, 1%. So there's a tremendous amount of inconsistency and of course that directly relates to the overall potential to damage the plant and reduce yield. If there's just a few leaves heavily damaged, it's not going to affect yield. Even though it can look bad on those leaves.
Dave Nicolai:Let's revisit the weather here a little bit. Did we have, in your opinion, a higher than normal amount of rainfall hours or amount of rainfall due or something that would mean more frequent rainfall this year? Do you think that is some of the situations and then you know, you think about Southern rust being a problem in farther to the South and Southern states, of course, obviously the climate and the weather can all be different. But the bottom line is if it gets going again for whatever reason in the tropic, you know, where we just, you know, having just the really successfully good conditions for it. And if it's not in play next year, in terms of the environment, in terms of that amount of rainfall and so forth, less of an issue even if our quote spore load is high down south.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think this year we had just excellent conditions for development of southern rust across a large swath of Minnesota. I think you can point at the weather, can point at the actual development of disease, can say yes. We had very good conditions for it. And so I just want to back up a bit or broaden this out just a little bit. We're talking about southern rust, and of course that was a significant problem across many fields in the state.
Speaker 3:And we went into this season, I would say many folks were thinking tar spot is one of the bigger risks, which of course is one of the newer diseases on corn in Minnesota, and has been causing some significant problems in some areas the last few years. And that disease, again it developed. We confirmed it in at least 49 counties across the Southern Half of Minnesota. Although most fields it was at low levels. There were some exceptions.
Speaker 3:It was higher levels some places. But again that disease is out there. Let's let's not just focus on southern rust. I think the overall continuing risk of tar spot is probably higher. I mean time will tell but we need to keep that in mind too.
Dave Nicolai:Well especially because we observed it or I should say the public and the science and researchers and the industry and everybody, the spread of tar spot, you know, Western into Western Minnesota into the Dakotas. And so some of the, I shouldn't say conventional thoughts were that okay, we have in the residue in the corn, I. E. Therefore we could expect, you know. So the situation was, you know, the observations were all over the place.
Dave Nicolai:But again, going back to the weather and so forth and what we know and what we don't know.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes. I mean one thing we can say I think for sure about tar spot that's quite different than southern rust. Tar spot, the pathogen is established across much of Minnesota. It doesn't require to be introduced from another state for us to have a problem with it. But we need the right weather conditions there as well and that's something we're still trying to get a better understanding of.
Speaker 2:Okay so let's just talk a really highly applied question here about management. So what do farmers need to know to effectively manage these diseases? And, you know, I think about farmer psychology a lot, and, you know, there's a lot of discussion about disease this year, and I think that just turns up the intensity on desire to apply fungicides prophylactically and just write it into their program, and maybe not pay that much attention to what they actually have, just make a decision to just, I'm going to sleep better if I just pay for and plan on this fungicide application. So is that an appropriate angle? And if not, what do what minimum information do farmers need to know to better manage these things besides my corn just seemed to die a little bit early this year, it didn't you know dry down early and didn't have the yields that I expected etc.
Speaker 3:Well Seth, the point you raised earlier is you know the more folks can understand what they really have in their fields, what is actually limiting yields, will really help obviously guide what the appropriate responses are and what kind of investments will pay off. We're talking about southern rust. Yes, it was widespread but it didn't cause yield loss in every field. And I'm just going to bring up an example in the research fields I work in and south of Rosemont, Minnesota. We had southern rust there, but there was less there this year than there was last year.
Speaker 3:There was also a lot less tar spot than there was last year. So you know we had plenty of rain both years. So fungicides didn't provide much benefit there, but other places they did. Fungicides work great to control disease if they're applied at the right time at the right rate in the right way. If you don't have enough disease, the odds of return are much, much lower.
Speaker 3:So making that decision is not always easy because we can't always apply exactly when we want, at the turn of a dime. Ideally we could scout and make an educated decision based on what's happening in our fields or around us. That would be the best way, but of course there are limitations to that I realize.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we just have to for me, it's really important to to push back on some of this very rational and instinctual thought about just, you know, being more aggressive next year because of some losses this year. I that there's it's a very rational response that people have to risk is that they had some damage one year and then they need to do something. It's, you know, it's just like not having insurance and having a problem, and then all of a sudden you buy insurance and then you don't have anything again, right? So there's another problem. So it's the way we react to how things occur in our lives universally, and so I just want to make sure that people use good information when they're making their decisions, especially in really tight economic times.
Speaker 3:Yes. And it's again it's hard to know what's really going to limit yields in a field. We're talking about disease, but we all know there are a lot of other factors. And I just want to say, you know, not only do we have we focused on southern rust so far, little bit about tar spot. Some fields, northern corn leaf blight was also pretty severe this year under the same conditions.
Speaker 3:Again, lot of moisture especially. So that was something noticed by a lot of folks as well and reached pretty significant levels in some areas. And again those are all fungal diseases that can be managed needed with a fungicide. And I just want to bring up one other disease on corn that I want to mention that Goss's wilt is making some of the in some areas. Again many of you may, some of you remember that this disease really broke out about 2010 was pretty significant problem across much of Minnesota, at least in scattered areas anyway, a few years after 2010.
Speaker 3:Then we've had good resistance in most of our hybrids that's really kept that disease under control. And now this year we've been seeing more of it. I've gotten reports from a number of folks that we're seeing more of it this year. So again, I don't know where or when that's going to show up, but that one is easily managed with resistance. You know, a lot of hybrids are available with good resistance to Gauss's wilt.
Speaker 3:So that's something we shouldn't have to deal with. And we have a way to effectively prevent it.
Dave Nicolai:Yeah, before we leave that, anything else that follows along what Seth was talking about in terms of there's an opportunity at this fall even though farmers typically you know pre buy and get their seed lined up. Are there anything conversations that growers need to have with their seed suppliers about tolerance versus resistance. You know what are some things what are some things on checklist that they need to ask about to get some information before they make that final selection?
Speaker 3:Well back to I think kind of an obvious answer to this is if somebody is concerned about a particular problem whether it be Southern Rust, Tar Spot, Goss's Wilt, Northern Corn Leaf Light, There are hybrids available that are much less susceptible than others. Some quite resistant. And so that would be the first thing. Talk to the seed dealer. Find out which hybrids are available that have other traits that are needed that have the highest levels of tolerance or resistance.
Speaker 3:And they may not always be available, but there are differences available that will really reduce the potential impact of these diseases.
Speaker 2:And that might be, you know, I think the decision making process might be different this year if we have really tight economics. And I think in most years, farmers would select the highest yielding hybrid and then add a fungicide so that they can, you know, use that approach in a lot of cases because that yield, they want to protect that yield at any cost. Maybe a more conservative approach might be more aggressive management through hybrid selection that shouldn't necessarily cost much more, and we know there's differences in hybrid costs, of course, but then trying to avoid those fungicide applications. So it's, I think, maybe just a different, little different shade on the same kind of thing, but it might be a way that farmers need to think about things differently in tight economic times.
Dave Nicolai:Talk about thinking differently, let's segue to another crop that you're involved with and that Seth obviously is close to his daily work and that's soybeans. What about soybean diseases this last year in Minnesota and anything that stands out or anything that we need to be aware of?
Speaker 3:Well most of them that showed up are the ones we'd expect on a year like this. We've had some white mold in some areas. Certainly we had a fair amount of SDS Sundance Syndrome in some places as well. Diseases we kind of expect when we have a lot of rain. Brown stem rot is out there in a lot of fields.
Speaker 3:We have to keep that in mind as well. And those are all stem and root diseases. Rhizoctonia early in the season. We had ideal conditions for that as well. And so those are a few.
Speaker 3:In terms of leaf diseases, one that we were talking about a few years ago and kind of disappeared in our droughty years was frogeye leaf spot. There were a few fields that saw a fair amount of that this year, especially down in the Southeast, but it was scattered throughout the state. So that's another disease that can be significant. It rarely has been, but with continued wet weather and wet summers, we might see more of that one. So that was a bit of a curiosity in some ways, but it's not a new problem here.
Speaker 3:But it's rarely reached levels that would off yield. And the other disease that was found this year for the first time in Minnesota was red crown rot, which is a root disease. Fungal root disease that you may have heard about in the ag news. It's been increasing substantially in Illinois the last five or six years and now spreading across other states in the Midwest now including Southwestern Minnesota where it was found in one field. So new problem definitely causing some significant issues in Illinois.
Speaker 3:Only found in one field in Illinois and Minnesota at a relatively low level. So nothing that really took any yield off the state overall, but it is something we're watching and we will definitely want to watch for it next year to try to figure out you know when and where that is occurring.
Dave Nicolai:You talked about watching and excuse me, there's been some things in the press etcetera, about the similarity in symptomology to another disease, SDS, or in terms of what we would see above ground. Is there some similarities and commonalities because they're both soil borne here in terms of that, in terms of observations and what farmers should think about in terms of that? Say for example they're growing soybean variety that they believe has a certain amount of tolerance to SDS, but yet it's still there and it's increasing. But I mean I'm using some examples from farther outside of Minnesota, but any comments there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well the first point is that again like I said we really want to be scouting and looking for this Red Crown Rot next year to try to understand how widespread it really is in Minnesota. Maybe it's restricted to one field or maybe it's more widespread and we just haven't noticed it as what it truly is because it does look a lot like sudden death syndrome from the top of the plant or brown stem rot. They look very very similar in terms of the leaf symptoms. We pull a plant, look at the lower stems, now then you start seeing the differences the red coloration on the crown of the stem with red crown rot and these small red spots on the lower stem, two characteristic signs and symptoms of red crown rot. But also in the field that we found, red crown rot, sudden death syndrome was also there.
Speaker 3:So I'm hearing this report from other places in the Midwest, they're often found together. So we don't know if there's some sort of interaction, we don't really know how important that might be or how widespread that dual sort of infection is, but it is occurring.
Speaker 2:And I think we see a lot of, folks see a lot of SDS. I mean, SDS is kind of a regular occurrence now. It was ten years ago we didn't have a ton of it in Minnesota, but I think it's pretty much endemic around here, and I think people are used to seeing this kind of thing, especially when we get out towards right at leaf drop and towards maturity when we see these kind of spots show up in fields and things. So my assumption is that if these things really look that much alike, you know, at the one foot level, at the at the 500 foot level, they probably look an awful lot alike, and and we're probably missing some there there's a potential for us to miss some of the red crown rot that was out there in fields.
Speaker 3:That's correct. And it's just in that one isolated field in Minnesota. It's been found in one isolated field in Wisconsin. Red crown rot has not been found in Iowa yet. It's been found in Missouri.
Speaker 3:So it seems to be whether it's spreading or just being found across new places in the Midwest or what we don't really know. But it is definitely appearing and being reported from more and more places so it is something the soybean industry is paying attention to.
Dave Nicolai:So in Minnesota I think you were interacting with our plant disease clinic here on campus would you recommend that is part of the equation or to answer the equation in helping to substantiate whether or not it is present and if you are suspicious? Let me put it that way.
Speaker 3:Yes. I'd say that's critical because the symptoms the clear symptoms of red crown rot don't always show up in the field. We need to get samples into the diagnostic lab here to really confirm it. And, you know, we're going to invite those samples to be sent in next year when people suspect they might have it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just to reiterate, you do not want samples taken this time of year. Somebody shouldn't go out to the field and pick up some straw behind their combine because they had disappointing yields and send you a bag of soybean straw, right?
Speaker 3:That's correct. We don't expect to see any suspect samples until next August based on how the disease typically develops and maybe into early September. But that's going to be the time period we'll be really trying to pay most attention to this.
Speaker 2:So how about management? So you know back to my theme here about farmers and farmer psychology and you know, as I mentioned, farmers think a lot about SDS. They've seen it. They look for varieties that have some tolerance. They're maybe even considering a seed treatment.
Speaker 2:If they're already in that boat for SDS, and they're concerned about Red Crown Ranch. Should they be adding that to their, you know, the decision making this fall, or should they wait until they know what they've got next year and then add that onto the list?
Speaker 3:Well given its limited distribution in Minnesota, I don't think many folks nearly need to be thinking about this from a management point of view yet. But when the time comes, certainly the seed companies are looking at resistance. You know, not in our maturity groups up here, but further south. So they're getting some idea of what genetic backgrounds relate to resistance to red crown rot. So that will be coming.
Speaker 3:I can't say how effective it's going to be at this point. But apparently there are some differences in varieties that have been identified, for example in Central Illinois, Southern Illinois. Seed treatments are available and there's more evidence building now that's showing that some of them work against both SDS and RID crown rot. So we don't again have that evidence for the Northern US but we have enough information to say we probably have products that will be reasonably effective at least. Again more to come on that.
Speaker 2:And, you know, there's, you know, oversaturation of these things in the news, and there's information out there. And we were talking before we started recording about cultural practices, early planting and late planting and all of these things. And so your recommendation is not to change any other cultural practices around soybean production based on what's worked for farmers, especially regarding know red crown rot.
Speaker 3:That's correct and I just want to say there's some information on cultural management practices that is delayed planting might reduce it. But that information comes from Louisiana where The soil temperature gets warmer faster of course than it does here in Minnesota where they can get to a high enough temperature where the disease might actually be reduced in its ability to infect and develop.
Speaker 2:So don't wait until soil temperatures are 85 or 90 degrees Fahrenheit to plant your soybeans in Minnesota?
Speaker 3:That's correct.
Speaker 2:Okay, good.
Dave Nicolai:So you can still do your early planting, Seth?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so at this point we don't know of any real cultural planting strategy practices that will be beneficial in any significant way for Red Crown rot in Minnesota. So Dean, we're getting into the end of our time here. Any last words or comments or on something that we perhaps we haven't talked about or anything you want to leave with folks and thinking about 2026? Well, to reiterate what everybody knows already and we've already talked about, every year is different. What happened this year certainly doesn't help predict what will happen next year.
Speaker 3:But it does give us more information. It gives us more basis to make decisions. It can help us focus on what might be important. But it's hard to use information from last year to really help make the best decisions yet for next year. Because diseases don't each occur each year.
Speaker 3:The weather variable is too important. Very
Dave Nicolai:good. Well, it sounds like we'll have an opportunity to visit again, especially when we get into the growing season 2026 if not before then about some of these things. There's research in other states besides Minnesota that can help us but we have to integrate that and find out what's what's best for our our clients and our clientele.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mean there's who knows what's going to happen with trade and, you know, planting intentions and if we get in a situation where there's going to be a lot of corn on corn, maybe we'll bring Dean back this winter and we can talk about managing corn diseases on corn on corn situations or how to how to manage some corn and in these shorter rotations. So maybe maybe that's another topic depending on how things shake out.
Dave Nicolai:Very good. Well, thank you Dean for stopping by today for the CropCast podcast. This is Dave Nicolai with the University of Minnesota Extension, Minnesota CropCast. I'm here, have been with you today along with my cohost Doctor. Seth Nave, University of Minnesota Extension soybean specialist.
Dave Nicolai:We appreciate your listening and have a good day.
