Looking back, ahead as season winds down

DECATUR, Ill. — As summer turns to fall, farmers are encouraged to evaluate some of the agronomic decisions that were made this year.

“I don’t know that there’s a whole lot left that I would recommend going out and doing and spending money on that’s going to impact this crop, but there’s a lot that we can learn right now,” Mike Probst, BASF central and southern Illinois technical service representative, said at the Farm Progress Show.

“If there’s something that worked really well, maybe we need to try to continue doing that. If there’s something that we think maybe could have worked a little bit better that we can tweak, such as a fungicide timing with Veltyma on corn, maybe that’s something that we can look at doing next year to try to improve things.”

Probst reviewed this year’s successes and challenges during the growing season in his diverse geographies.

Southern Illinois farmers had challenges this spring with seemingly non-stop heavy rains that delayed planting. Can you give an update on the current conditions there?

Probst: They were able to catch up, but we’ve definitely lost a lot of the potential that we would have had if planting would have been timely. A lot of the corn wasn’t planted until late May or June, and the soybeans, the same thing if they were able to get planted.

There was a number of prevent-plant acres down there, too, and that’s unfortunate. They just could never catch a break and they finally got to the point where it didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The ones that were able to get planted, I think there is a halfway decent crop out there. It’s just not going to be breaking any records down there.

The good thing that they’ve got going for them is that that later planted stuff does still have some grain-fill left. We’ve been hot and dry, but I think there’s still some bushels to be gained if we can get lucky and catch a rain.

Did it impact any of the double-crop soybean planting due to possibly a later wheat harvest?

Probst: Yeah, I think there’s still probably some potential on those soybeans, too. I think we need some rains, but I actually saw quite a few of the double-cropped soybeans were able to come out of the ground pretty well because we actually had more moisture than we’re used to having that time of year. So, the emergence was good.

What are some of the disease or insect issues that southern Illinois farmers have faced in the growing season?

Probst: Southern rust is the big topic right now, and that’s been a lot of the conversations I’ve had the last couple of weeks. This is probably the first time that we’ve seen it come in this early in probably 10 years. To come in as early as it did and to have what we predict is going to be the impact that it’s having has been in a lot of conversations.

The good thing is the proactive farmers that knew that they were going to use a good fungicide, for example, Veltyma, they’ve seen a lot of success out of that, especially the ones that have applied early.

We’ve always promoted an application at tassel timing just to try to stay ahead of diseases like we saw this year where it showed up early. I’ve walked a lot of fields where they sprayed Veltyma at tassel and there’s not a lot of rust out there in some very heavy pressure areas.

The growers that were proactive and used a good fungicide, they’re really protecting that grain-fill, and we’ve seen a lot of success out of that.

There’s been a little bit of concern to some folks that maybe waited. I know there’s been a lot of recommendations to spray fungicide at brown silk, which does leave the door open a little bit.

We’ve had some folks that have used good fungicides like Veltyma and sprayed a little late after that rust came in, so they’re finding a little bit of rust out there. The good thing is, I still think they’re protecting most of their yield because that fungicide still kicked in and was able to stop that disease progression.

What were some of the factors that moved southern rust earlier than normal?

Probst: I think part of it was the moisture southern Illinois got. It has been a peculiar year for southern rust because it’s come in early and I do think that it has a lot to do with the storms and rains that came in.

But we saw it do some things that we don’t normally see it do, and we started finding it in Iowa before we found it in southern Illinois. That was a little bit odd. But they were maybe a little bit further ahead and so perhaps that just kind of led to a little bit more of an environment or that corn was a little bit more susceptible to the rust.

Once we got around pollination in southern Illinois it started creeping its way in there, but I think the combination of some of those storms that probably blew those spores in and then followed that up with very hot weather, which we know that southern rust does like those hotter temperatures, it just created the right environment for it.

Your central Illinois geography includes Champaign, Springfield, Decatur and Bloomington. What have you seen across that area this growing season?

Probst: Man, did that crop get off to a good start? It was some of the best crops I’ve ever seen. I was up around in Springfield a lot this spring, and I was amazed by the potential that they had, and they were able to maintain that all the way through to pollination.

Unfortunately after that, we saw the heat crank up and the water turn off, and they really never caught a break after that.

We’re starting to see a lot of corn drying down very quickly and progressing through grain-fill a lot more rapidly than we would like to. I think there is still going to be a very good crop out there on the corn and soybean side.

I am concerned that we’re going to lack the grain-fill to reach that top-end yield that everybody thought we might have had earlier in the year, though.

I know some folks have said that they still hope to catch rain. My worry is that I don’t know that there’s a lot more that we can we can impact at this point.

Any disease or insect issues that you’ve seen in central Illinois?

Probst: It’s still a conversation on southern rust in central Illinois. That’s been a big portion of it and honestly has been for most of the state. It does seem to be in pockets, but I think you can find it if you really want to.

It is interesting because even though southern Illinois this year has been so different than central Illinois, a lot of the conversations are the same. That we’re seeing the disease, the timings are maybe a little bit different.

There is some southern rust out there in central Illinois, but again, going back to what we talked about with southern Illinois, one of the most consistent things that I have seen is the folks that were spraying early were the most successful. And the folks that waited a little bit maybe let some disease in where they could have prevented it if they’d been a little bit more ahead of it.

What are some of the new products coming into the market from BASF?

Probst: We have a product coming out that may impact some of those northern Illinois growers coming out and that’s Zorina fungicide, particularly for those farmers that face white mold in their soybeans.

I know that gets to be more of an issue in northern Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. It’s one of those diseases that if you know you’ve got it, you’ve got to manage for it. The tricky part is that it takes multiple applications sometimes or you’re spraying for white mold, but then you’re maybe not getting disease control on some other soybean diseases.

We’ve got a Zorina fungicide that’s coming out that is going to combine basically our Revysol technology that’s got really good disease control outside of white mold, but then it’s also got our Endura technology that’s going to have that white mold control.

So, we’re basically putting two in one in that combination to try to make things a little bit easier on those growers