MSU Extension Field Crops

>> Speaker 1: Hello, this is Marilyn Thelen with Michigan State University. You have joined the field crops webinar series. Tonight's program is field crops disease management, and Dr. Martin Chilvers has joined us, and we'll be, be presenting our program this evening. We're ready to get started. So, with that, Dr. Chilvers? >> Speaker 2: Alright. Thanks Marilyn. Good evening, everyone. Thanks for joining us tonight. So I'm going to talk about wheat, soybean, and corn and give you some disease management updates. Certainly, I'd really welcome some questions, so, file them in and I'll do my best to address those at the end. OK, so let's- well- just before I get going, I guess, you can probably hear that I have an accent. I'm originally from Australia. And I've been over here in the U.S. since the end of 2003 and at Michigan State now for the last six years. All right [COUGH]. So I thought I'd start out with head scab management trials. And this particular trial's been really aimed at addressing, you know, what is the fungicide application timing window for head scab management? 'Cause up until now, if you had asked us that, we would recommend at flowering; that's essentially the timing to really shoot for. So we're really trying to address what is the window in terms of this time; can we go a few days post-flowering until we get adequate disease control? So this is jointly funded by the Michigan Wheat Program as well as the United States Wheat & Barley Scab Initiative. So it's a multi, multi-state trial being done across six or more states. Okay, for our trial, we had the following set up. So we used different wheat varieties to get an idea or their [INAUDIBLE] responses, so we used Ambassador as our susceptible checks, something that is susceptible to head scab; DynaGro 9242 as our partially resistant check; and then a couple of Michigan State's breeding lines... [INAUDIBLE] bottom [INAUDIBLE]. In terms of fungicide timing treatments, we had the six following treatments in. We had a check where we put no fungicide on. We also did not inoculate that check. Then we had an inoculated check, and when I mean inoculated, I'm talking about applying the head scab pathogen itself. And so we had six different treatments in terms of the fungicide applications. And one of them...one of our controls is an inoculated, non-sprayed check. So we basically get the head scab pathogen and we innoculate the trial and we would get into [INAUDIBLE] fungicides on the, on that particular treatment. And then we had the standard, what would we typically recommend, which is a fungicide at flowering. Or, fungicides 2 days post-flowering, 4 days post-flowering, or up to 6 days post-flowering to really look at the [INAUDIBLE]. Okay...and using pretty standard...inputs in terms of planting dates- 10/17/2014- 90 pounds of nitrogen was applied at green up. No additional nitrogen post, post-green up, so it wasn't super high input with respect to nitrogen. Now, this is just to give you an idea of what the trial looked like. At the campus farms here at East Lansing, we're actually able to set up a irrigation system. You can see these risers up here in the field, and what that does for us is it allows us to set up really high disease pressure situations. So these, these risers that you can see were irrigating the wheat field every hour for, I mean it's on the hour, so we had a lot of moisture on the- on those- that wheat canopy, really pushing head scab conditions. I just made a note of the flowering date here; most of the varieties flowered on the six of the fourth. Which is when we initiated the trial. And one of the varieties flowered four days later, on six to the eighth. So then we've just been [INAUDIBLE] the treatments four days later to correspond with the growth stages. One really important thing just to note here...well, just, before I get there I guess, you know, we are using small plot trials because, you know, we've got this irrigation system so we can't run the trial over multiple acres. It's gotta be fairly well contained. And so we apply chemistry with a backpack spray that you can see here. Carbon dioxide pressurized cylinder that pressurizes the system up. And we have our fungicide mixed in the, in the bottle in the back of that spray pack. One point I wanted to make with respect to application is that we're using to T-Jet- twin jet nozzles. And when you're using those twin jet nozzles, they're basically angled about thirty degrees; thereabouts. The whole idea there...the spray is at an angle so that we get really maximum cap coverage of the wheat heads. Remember, we're not specifically trying to control foliar diseases [INAUDIBLE], but I'll talk about that. What we're really trying to do is get our fungicide product onto those wheat heads to prevent infection, so very important we use those- the correct nozzle type. So in terms of disease, then, we go through likenesses and there's things that just- beginning to turn. And we'll go through and do variety for head scab. So you can see in this picture in the top right-hand corner there, we've got some wheat. It should be nice and green at this growth stage. However, those that are infected with head scab have bleached out. And so we, we basically go through every single plot, grab a number of heads, assess them for the amount of disease, and basically record the incidence; the percentage of the head that is...has disease. From this, we have a disease incidence and also a disease severity. So how many of the heads and how severely are they infected, and basically we use that to calculate a head scab disease index. We try and do those from 0 up, all the way up to 100 for a complete...disease. So, what you're looking at here, then. The dotted lines between the different labels along the bottom there are just indicating the [INAUDIBLE] for the different varieties. Just to make it nice and clear. The red...red bars that you can see are our two controls. So the first red bar is where we put no fungicide down. The second red bar is no fungicide, but where we've inoculated that plot, ok. You might wonder why we don't have more disease where we didn't any fun- any inoculum down, but that's just because the plots are very small, so we've got plot to plot spread of the fungus, and that, that's perfectly fine for this trial; it doesn't, doesn't negatively affect anything. So there's a, there's a really- if you look at these first couple of varieties, we've got Ambassador here on the very left hand side, that's those six bars; and then that resistant 9242, that second set of bars. So, in the Ambassador, there's this pretty heavy disease pressure where we don't put enough fungicide on, so we're rating it at an 8 or a 9 in terms of the amount of disease that's present. When we would put a fungicide on at flowering, all right, we'd push that down...cut it by a quarter, down to just over a 2 on our rating scale there. And, likewise, and two, four, and six days post-flowering, also, able to push down the amount of head scabs, so it's just demonstrating that even six days post-flowering we're able to maintain very good head scab disease control. If we have a look at the next set of bars, what we're looking at there is the 9242. And, straight off the bat, you can see that the 9242 developed significantly less head scab disease, okay. And that's purely due to the genetics. The resistance in that 9242 is held to the control amount of head scab that developed. However, even- even with that control from the resistance in that 9242, when we apply the fungicide, we're still able to get a significant reduction in the amount of head scab developed. Again, at flowering, normally three to six days post-flowering. And, the other Michigan State lines that you can see there are essentially showing just the same story, ok. So let's move on then to DON, or Vomitoxin. So we had really quite high levels in this trial. None of them acceptable, especially for white wheat varieties. The typical limit is one part per million. So in the Ambassador, obviously we had far more DON or Vomitoxin present than we did in the partially resistant 9242 variety. Unfortunately we didn't see statistical difference in the Ambassador, even with a fungicide application. We believe that we didn't see the control that we were expecting due to the environment that we created. So we were really pushing irrigation, remember, you know, and irrigating [INAUDIBLE] this proper canopy and the heads wet throughout the day and throughout the night. So this might be a reason why we did not see a greater reduction in corresponding- or corresponding reduction in the amount of DON that develops. In the 9242, obviously there's significantly less DON that developed, so again this just gets back to the genetics and...how critical it is to select a resistant variety. And remember, all of these varieties that are soft white winter wheats that if you select the right variety, just right there you can significantly reduce the amount of head scab and vomitoxin that develops. With these treatments, we were actually able to significantly reduce the amount of head scab that developed at two, four, six days post-flowering. And again, a similar story with the Michigan State lines; the F1014 and the E6012. Okay. So, we conducted this trial that I've been talking about on campus. But Martin Nagelkirk also conducted this trial. Up near Deckerville in Michigan near the thumb there. And what we're looking at here; that top graphic is 2014 data, just with respect to the amount of vomitoxin that developed, and the bottom graphic is 2015. So if we start with the 2014 data, Martin actually saw that in his Ambassador check where he did not put any fungicide down, he saw 0.6 ppms. So at the top of this scale, when he applied three days prior to flowering or at flowering, he did not see a huge reduction in DON, but it was less than in the non-sprayed check; about 0.5 or 0.45 ppm. And he actually saw at three and six days post-flowering that...goes...statistically really significant reduction in DON. He got that down to about 0.15, so, some pretty good control there. He also did a treatment that went beyond the six days post-flowering out to nine days. And the amount of DON started to increase, and we were up to about 0.5 ppm [INAUDIBLE] so, maybe getting into the edge of the...the window in terms of head scab control there. Okay, so let's look at the bottom graphic now. So we're looking at the 2015 data. Here, we saw a much greater control than the non-sprayed check. So, he doesn't even actually have the non-sprayed check graphed out on this graphic, but where he did not put a fungicide down, we saw a DON level at 2.4 parts per million, ok, so it's right off...right off the scale. Where he put it- a fungicide on two days prior to flowering, so that would bring that down to 1.2; at flowering, it's at 1.6, so it's pretty close. And again, pretty similar across the board; two, four, and six days post-flowering, so, all in all, pretty good control across the board with respect to timing. And just before I go on, I'd like to use the pictures on either side here just to talk about what we mean by flowering, OK. This is a very important component to think of, because if we, you know, mess the crop staging up, then we, you know, obviously our recommendations are gonna go out the window. So when we, when we talk about flowering, what we mean by that is that at least fifty percent of heads or more have anthers on them. Okay? So basically, for us in the field, what we will do is go out and collect a number of heads, and say, you know, probably a handful of thirty heads or so, and then just count how many of those have flowers. And once we're up to thirty percent or more...that have flowers, then we know we're at that...the beginning of flowering. So, not only did we control head scab disease, but inadvertently, or, you know, the added bonus here is that we control flag leaf disease. And so we go out into the field and scout...or, not scout but we go in and rate the amount of head scab that- head scab, sorry; the amount of flag leaf that...disease that develops on the flag leaf, okay. There's an image in the top right-hand corner just to demonstrate a pretty severely diseased flag leaf. We see a very similar pattern with flag leaf disease and head scab. So, the Ambassador variety, again, is a very susceptible variety not only to head scab but also to flag leaf diseases. So you can see, in terms of the percentage of flag leaf, that we do not spray a fungicide in the Ambassador. Reckoning between 52 and about 66 or 68 percent of the flag leaf had disease, so, that area was not able to contribute to the yield, right. And the flag leaf...flag leaf presumed to be very important driver of yield. So where we put the fungicide on at flowering or two, four or six day post-flowering; we're able to significantly reduce the amount of disease in the susceptible Ambassador, bringing that down to less than twenty percent flag leaf disease. In the 9242, again, a really good demonstration of the...how critical it is to select a variety with good resistance. And, we can see in the 9242 that we only have about 11% flag leaf disease in the non-sprayed controls, ok? However, when we do apply that fungicide, yet again, we're able to significantly reduce the amount of flag leaf as it develops. Either at flowering or up to six days post-flowering. And again, in the Michigan State lines, a very similar pattern, ok; as we apply that fungicide we're able to also reduce flag leaf disease. Of course, if we're controlling diseases of the flag leaf, which are a driver of yield, and we see a corresponding yield-to-pick or yield bump, ok, so, not too surprising...for in the Ambassador, where we did not put a fungicide down, we're seeing about sixty bushels to the acre; where we were putting that fungicide on, to protect, you know, primarily for head scab, we're seeing that leaf protection in a corresponding twenty to thirty bushel protection. And similarly, with the- even with the partially resistant 9242, that was yielding about seventy bushels to the acre with no fungicide. We'd see about, 'round about twenty bushel increase there too, heading up to about ninety bushels per acre. And again, similar results for those of the Michigan State lines that I've included in this study. So, this is another image of the field trial; you can see the various varieties through the field; so we've got some with the awns on here- the hairs on the head- and some without the awns; the hairless varieties. That's just how it's organized in the trial. Anyway, in terms of head scab management conclusions, then, fungicide up to six days post-flowering still provides effective [SOUND] control of head scab. Application at flowering also protects at flag leaf...this appears, at least in our limited work, it appears to be one of, you know...if you're gonna put a fungicide on; we'd certainly recommend putting it on to tr- control head scab disease... that you'd get that inadvertent flag leaf protection too. And of course with that flag leaf protection you get that increased yield. So, going forward this year we're set up to do something similar. This is the conclusion of this two year trial; this particular version. Our next step is really to look at split, split product application and different products, ok. All-one fungicide chemistry. So, one important thing to think about in terms of head scab management is the potential negative effect of fungicides, right, and we wouldn't typically think...think about fungicides having a potentially negative effect. What we're very aware of, and this is true across a number of different university studies, is that the strobilurin class of chemistries can potentially increase the amount of vomitoxin that develops, ok. So they might provide some head scab control, but there is a vomitoxin risk with the strobilurin class of chemistries. So this particular slide set, or this slide, was given to me by my colleague at Illinois, and he looked at the application headline, six fluid ounces, applied at different growth stages around flowering; just at and before flowering, ok. So, this is done at four different locations in Illinois. And so you've got there in different colors; you've got Fks 9, Fks 10, and Fks 10.5, so, flowering. And the scale on the Y-axis here is essentially percentage of DON control relative to the non-sprayed check, ok. So, basically what we see if we, if we apply it early, prior to heading, we're okay. We're not going to have any negative impacts. But if we were to apply a fungicide product with a strobilurin in it, or a strobilurin-only product, we run the risk of potentially increasing the amount of vomitoxin that develops, ok. And so this is showing in these green bars in particular where we're hitting the fixed 10.5; we're at forty percent increase in the amount of vomitoxin that develops, ok. So it's really, it's limited to the strobilurin class of chemistries. It's something to certainly be aware of, with respect to the head scab management. So, in terms of efficacy of fungicides, so we've talked...all the data I've shown you so far has been about Prosaro. And as I've mentioned we're going to look at different fungicides this next coming year, so we're going to compare Caramba, Proline, and some type of Consan, I believe. This is a...this is a chart that's available through the North Central Wheat Disease Regional Committee. And so what we do is go through and rank various fungicide products for their control against different diseases. And I've just highlighted head scab here, so we've got a large [INAUDIBLE] here, but this is just to show you those that have efficacy against head scab. So Caramba, Proline, and Prosaro provide good control of head scab; [INAUDIBLE], which is now being marketed under various generic labels, provides fair control against head scab. So, it's something that could be used that we'd probably recommend it where you're at a pretty low risk for head scab; you haven't really had an issue of head scab in the past, you're actually growing a partially resistant variety, and then, you know, the cost saving with the [INAUDIBLE] might make it worth using that particular product. Okay. So this is where I normally get some...interaction and I won't bother doing that today but guess which is the most, you know, the number one thing you should think about in terms of integrated head scab management; what should we think about first right at the very start of the season, ok. That probably should be a resistant variety, ok; so hopefully you've seen that variety selection plays a really big part in terms of disease management. Second to that would certainly be a fungicide application. And, now, the recommendation is anywhere from flowering up to six days post-flowering, ok. And certainly, if you're rained out, you know; if I'm flowering up to six days, you will still see some benefit going beyond that window, but that would be a sort of recommended window if you can get into the field during that time. So again, certainly pay very close attention to the crop growth stage 'cause that's very important in terms of...making the correct application timing. And then of course, rotation, ok; so if you're planting wheat into corn or wheat residue, we run a higher risk of development of head scab, and that's because that head scab pathogen survives very well in corn residue. And also in wheat or other grass residues, ok? Ok, so I'm gonna keep moving and we'll come back, I think, to questions at the end; it might be easiest. So I'll give you a bit of an update now on corn. Have a guess at what disease this is. The scientific name down in the bottom right hand corner here...bit of a mouthful, and they keep changing the name, right? Anyway, this is northern corn leaf blight. So we saw quite a lot of this in 2014. Probably due in a large part due to, due to our very cool, wet summer we had...and it was certainly present again in 2015. And particularly in those varieties that had high susceptibility to northern corn leaf blight. This is a couple of photos from Christy's Sprague's technician, Gary Powell, up near Portland, Michigan. On the left here you can see that this... [INAUDIBLE] all the leaf area here is really burnt down with head scab, right; no, sorry, northern corn leaf blight. Way before it should be, so this is premature senescence just due to disease pressure on a very susceptible variety. Again, we can see that the leaves are drying up prior to the ear itself beginning to dry down. So much so that it's affecting grain fill even at this earlier stage; that's not a good thing. I could certainly show you some data that we've collected here in Michigan with respect to applying fungicides. We've never had a fungicide trial in a location with that much disease severity. If we had, I'm sure we'd be out at shows; pretty, you know, significant yield gains from that fungicide. But essentially summarizing the past four years of fungicide trials in corn. We can certainly control the amount of northern corn leaf blight and other foliar diseases that are there, but our yield gain with respect to that fungicide application is incredibly variable. Sometimes it's, you know, average is negative; sometimes it's somewhat positive, but it's, it's really, you know, not...on average, anyway, it's not...not strongly positive. So what I'm doing now- just gonna draw from some regional work to provide, I hope, a pretty nice summary. So, with respect to just thinking about the price of corn and your application costs and what sort of... How many bushels you should be seeing, with respect to no fungicide application... So let's assume a corn price of three dollars per bushel, selling price; and an application cost of say, that's twenty, twenty dollars per acre, right; that would include driving it across or flying it across the field and the actual chemistry cost. So if we're to do that, then, at today's market prices, unfortunately, we're going to need to see about a six, six to seven bushel increase with respect to no fungicide input at all, ok. And obviously that's changed with the lower market prices; if we were, you know, back, you know, at eight dollars per bushel then of course we need far less bushel bump in terms of breaking even on that application cost. Okay, so just keep that six bushel figure in mind as we just look at some of this data. Okay, so what we're looking at here is Southern states, so just the average yield with respect to application timing. So, if we apply a fungicide early, the V5 to V8's application timing; you see about a 4.2 bushel bump in the Southern...Southern states. This is, this includes Mississippi, Tennessee, I believe, and Louisiana. Standard application at VT or beginning of tasseling there; we're at about an 8 bushel bump. And a double application, and again, this is in the south, we're seeing about a 28 bushel bump, so a pretty significant bump, right, so this really gets your attention, ok. But why are we seeing this bump? What's specific about Southern states compared to more Northern states like Michigan? Ok, and you're probably thinking, well, it's a lot warmer down there; well yeah, a lot warmer, and you also have a lot more moisture; a lot more humidity, ok. And with those things, we're more likely to see disease. And we also have a spread of planting [INAUDIBLE] s, too, and that also helps to sort of create a green bridge from one crop to the next. Anyway. So, I think the important thing here is really just to demonstrate to you that, know, we apply fungicide for a reason, right, and that's typically to control foliar diseases, ok; fungal diseases. And when we split these three different states out, so- sorry, I misspoke- it's Arkansas, Louisiana, and Tennessee that we're averaging together just a second ago. We split them out and just looked at how much disease severity was present in each of the states; it really explains the story, ok. So, in Arkansas, they had a very high disease severity, so sixty percent of that ear leaf had disease on it, ok, and again, that ear leaf is a pretty good...indicator of photosynthetic material, right, more...gives your photosynthetic material to help form that, the ear. So we, if we have really high disease pressure, of course we're going to see a pretty good response to fungicide applications. So in the blue there is that early application; too early, really, to control disease that's there so we don't get a really good bump in disease. The VT timing; we're seeing about a 15 bushel bump, and two applications, so early and late, so controlling some of that early stuff- that can blow up- followed by a light application; we see about a, a 37 bushel bump, ok, so. Again, controlling very heavy disease pressure where we see those bumps. Louisiana- we only had about two percent disease severity, so of course very low disease. Similar to the many trials that I've done personally in Michigan. You know, we see very low disease pressure. And so of course we don't see a corresponding yield bump with respect to that fungicide application compared to the non-treated or non-sprayed control, ok. And Tennessee was somewhat moderate pressure. Twenty two percent disease area...disease there. And of course, we see, you know, moderate disease...or moderate yield gains, rather. So about a six bushel gain on the early, nearly ten bushels on that VT; and a double application, we're up to about fourteen bushel bump over the non-sprayed controls. Switching back now to the Midwest, and including Ontario, so in 2015 this is what we saw happen. And this is pretty close to what we see most years...it's the, again, this is just sort of summarizing the different timings that people potentially look at, ok. So if we go out really early and spray between V5 to V6, we don't often see a full bushel bump. It gets up to about 4 bushel bump across multiple years, but sometimes it's around about 0. So typically that's our least, sort of, economical application timing. If you really wanna make a fungicide application timing, then we recommend the VT application timing, ok; and that's where we see the most consistent response. And in this case, across these different states, we see about a five bushel bump, ok. And the double application, so an early followed by a VT application timing, we're seeing about a six bushel bump, and again, that we're [INAUDIBLE] across multiple years of data. So, making two applications, you're increasing your application cost; we really don't see added benefit in most situations. The caveat here again is, if you're under a situation where you've got very high disease pressure, you've got a very susceptible variety; then, you know, maybe you would benefit from the double application. If you're not typically seeing very high disease pressure, you still want to put an application on; we would probably recommend that VT- within tasseling- application timing; that's the most economically...that's where we typically see the most economic response. With respect to timing. Ok. Just another slide again to really highlight the differences that are available in terms of the hybrids that are out there. So these are two different hybrids. Side by side. Covered in northern leaf blight. And this is one on the left here; you can see a lot of disease pressure. So we've got a very susceptible variety here. On the right hand side, we've got a variety with very good resistance, even though it's right next door to this susceptible variety and spores are blowing from susceptible to this partially resistant variety; you're able to see that...it's able to certainly suppress the amount of disease developing and got a lot more area...look a lot better on this right hand side. So again, variety selection is certainly something to think about in terms of disease management; it should really be our number one tool. Okay, so just some of the factors that increase our odds of return on investment in the foliar fungicide, ok. If for some reason we need to grow a susceptible hybrid, we can certainly...application of fungicide; we're more likely to see a return on that investment. If we have weather conditions that are favorable for disease, so cool, wet summers; lots of moisture- 'course we're more likely to see a benefit from the foliar fungicide. Any situation we've got a lot of corn debris, so we've got continuous corn or we're in a situation where we've got minimum or low tillage; so we've got a lot of corn residue on the surface- that's where the disease hangs out during the winter. And then pops back up- at least for the northern corn leaf blight- back up onto your corn the following year. And certainly if we've got a history of disease in a particular field or a particular region of the state, then that's certainly somewhere, you know, that we're more likely to see return on investment. And if you're after a decision tool, we really don't have a great decision support tool in terms of an active model that's out there, but certainly we would recommend scouting for disease prior to or just at tassel. And look for disease that's present on the ear leaf or up to three leaves below the ear leaf; if you have disease present, you know, that might develop into more severe disease as we're continuing during the season, so we'd recommended that as a rule of thumb if you're after...after a rule of thumb in terms of making a decision whether to spray or not, ok. I got some questions this year about...ear mold management. From Jeff [INAUDIBLE] up in the thumb; he had some heavy disease develop in terms of gibberella ear rot. So he was looking around for some data, and there really isn't a great deal of data out there, so I asked my colleagues...and I managed to get this slide set from [INAUDIBLE], Ontario. So what we're looking at here is gibberella ear rot. That's really important to remember and realize that Fusarium graminearum, which is the head scab pathogen, is exactly the same pathogen as Gibberella zeae, okay; unfortunately we've got two different names for the same organism. The same fungus. And this causes either head scab on the wheat or corn ear rot, right. Corn gibberella ear rot to ear rot. So Jeff from up- Northern Thumb Crop Consulting- he just, he called me about this because when he had planted corn into wheat residue, he saw that he was getting about 3.5 to 5.5 DON in that particular corn, ok. But where he was planting corn into an old alfalfa stand, he typically was seeing...no DON turn up in the test results, OK. Now, and this, this just goes along with standard IPM practices; wherever possible we want to try to break up that disease cycle. Unfortunately, the head scab or the Gibberella ear rot pathogen infects both corn and wheat, ok. So, can we use fungicide to help control Gibberella ear rot? Before I continue I just want to point out that these are inoculated trials, so they're somewhat unofficial, but they are using, you know, these...simulating a high clearance sprayer here, giving the spray [INAUDIBLE] up above the canopy. And putting treatments on as many growers might be able to do. So it really comes down to this slide summarizing their data. And there's two really, really cool pieces of information in this particular study. So they, they looked at Proline as a chemistry. Proline, and Proline is certainly a chemistry that is registered in Michigan for Giberella ear rot control. They looked at application volume, ok, as their first component. We've got gallons per acre here- five versus ten and twenty gallons per acre to see the application volume to apply that same amount of Proline chemistry. And you've got DON...the corresponding DON percentage reduction's over here. So...again, this, this goes for most diseases, foliar diseases, that we're kept trying to control, and it's a very different set up to weed management, ok; we really want a fine droplet size in terms of...when we're thinking about fungicide applications. And application volume was also very important. So we can't really skimp, skimp on the application volume. So when we're at five gallons per acre, you look over here at the DON percentage reduction; they see no difference compared to non...non-sprayed control, ok. But when they push up to ten or twenty gallons per acre, we're actuallyable to see up to a twenty to forty percent reduction in the amount of vomitoxin that developed in the corn, ok, so, again, really important that we can get the application...correct in terms of application volume, ok. The second part of this was- which I thought was really, really interesting- down the bottom here, treatment number 9...we actually see an increase in the amount of vomitoxin that develops. And this is, again, a fungicide product, so, think about that; back to our wheat discussion and the strobilurin. So, actually saw that when they applied the headline above the crop, they're actually able to push up the amount of DON that develops, ok, in the crop. So, just again, just, you know, highlighting the effect of strobilurins; can potentially have a negative effect. Quilt is actually a premix of strobilurin and triazole chemistry, so, that was not statistically different [INAUDIBLE] ; there's a bit of a trend in terms of increasing the amount of DON- that wasn't statistically significant, but the Headline alone certainly did statistically increase the amount of DON that developed in those, those corn ears. Okay. The second part of their trial was something similar to our application timing in wheat, okay, so they looked at different application timings- V16 to 17, Tasseling, Full Silk, Silk plus 5 days, and Silk plus eleven days, or eleven days beyond silking, ok. What is the effect of that Proline application timing? So the user data from that- the pink bars are just showing you that there's really no statistical difference in terms of yield, ok, so they're, they mustn't have had much other foliar disease present in the trial. But the blue diamonds there- and the dotted line is just indicating the amount of vomitoxin on DON that developed, and the scale for that, it's over on the right-hand side of the graphic here. So, where we did not put any fungicide on, the untreated control; we're seeing about a 4.5 parts per million of DON. As we approach full silking, that's when we get our best protection from vomitoxin. We're pushing that down to about 1.5 ppm. And when we go beyond that silking, it starts to increase back up to levels that are similar to the non-sprayed control, so again, we've got a window. The best window should be, really is at silking, and that's typically the entry point for the...the Gibberella ear rot pathogen to enter through the silks into the ears. So management of Gibberella ear rot, then. Again, select resistant varieties if possible. There's unfortunately not a huge variation in- if you look at a catalog, probably [INAUDIBLE] if you're on the end of [INAUDIBLE] the 1 to 10 scale, it might not be vary much between 4 and 6 in terms of resistance, but certainly, you know, use the most resistant variety that, that's possible. In terms of the variety selection, we want to select varieties with loose husks. Tight husk tends to promote an environment of high humidity in the ear that tends to promote disease, OK. And, secondly with that variety selection you don't want an ear that's upright 'cause that's more likely to collect water in the top there and, again, just promote the Gibberella ear rot, so, varieties that when they begin to mature, they turn down- turn the ear down and don't get that rainwater collection, that's certainly something to look for. And, again, fungicide application might help to certainly manage your expectations. You know, we only see a percentage reduction. We don't see complete control, and that's true of pretty much all fungal disease that we deal with, whether it's a foliar application or a seed treatment, and ok, so manage your expectations. Now, before I get off the corn and switch over to soybeans, I just wanted to mention this particular disease. So this is called tar spot of corn. It popped up last year in Indiana and Illinois, ok, and so hopefully this disease just disappears this next year and we don't have to worry about a new disease in corn. I just wanted to bring it to your attention because maybe it's...it will be a problem again; we don't know yet. It developed very late in the season, so we weren't able to get information out last year. And so basically as the name suggests, it looks like flecks of tar are on the leaf surface. And you can even feel that, so if you feel those leaves, you've gotta feel...what feels like raised, raised bumps of tar, ok, and that's actually just the fungal organisms on the leaf surface. So I just wanted to point this one out. Hopefully that's not a big issue; if it starts to pop up next year, we'll certainly try and get the word out; let you know what to do about this. But certainly if you see anything that looks like this, we'd be more than happy to look at photos or, you know, send in samples to the lab or to the diagnostic lab and we'd be very happy to take a look at that for you. Okay, so soybean update. The soybean seed treatment study that we've been running for the past three years now...and I'll just finish with a couple short slides on soybean sudden death syndrome; this is the quick update on that. So we've been running soybean seed treatment profitability trials for the last three years. We've been using the Michigan State Soybean Performance Trials that are conducted across Michigan and here on that map. So I've been the focus here not not. We selected two Asgrow varieties, mid-2 maturity; [INAUDIBLE] varieties using the same variety across all seven locations there. And two Pioneer loca- varieties, and we just selected those just to be representative of the bulk of...varieties that are kind of used up there. And then we also selected treatments that are commonly available to you, the grower. So we had seed that had no fungicide on it; no- or no seed treatment at all, just naked seed, untreated control. We had a fungicide-only package, fungicide plus insecticide package, then we had a full package- fungicide, insecticide, nematicide, which is typically the [INAUDIBLE] package in this particular trial. Before we can go on, let's just talk again about what we typically need to see in terms of bushel gain over naked seed in terms of return on...on the investment. So, let's assume a soybean selling price is about $8 per bushel. So a fungicide-only treatment, per bag, at a hundred and forty thousand seeds per acre, is going to cost you around about $4, so again, need to see about a half bushel bump with that, ok. Fungicide-Insecticide, we can, you know, again, it depends how you purchase your seed and whatnot, but you're probably at around about the eight to ten dollar mark, thereabouts. So, on average, we're going to see around about a one bushel bump to break even, ok. And the full package, we are typically pushing up to around about the twenty dollar mark. So for that we're going to have to see around about a two point five bushel bump, ok. So here are the yield results from 2013. 2013 was our first year out, and we, so we didn't have a student to go around and check for plant stand and insect pressure, but we were collecting yield data. So I've got this broken up by the different varieties. So, varieties and also by the locations. So HI stands for Hillsdale; we've got Ingham, Lenawee, Alger, Saginaw, St. Joe, and Sanilac. Okay, so seven different locations. And, what we're looking at here is yield of these different treatments relative to the naked or the control no...no seed treatment option, ok. So, blue is the fungicide-only; orange, fungicide-insecticide; and gray is the full package. So, at Hillsdale, we can see that there's a couple of, again, there's a couple of points here to really sort of think about. At Hillsdale on one of the varieties, we're averaging about five bushel bump relative to the naked seed, ok, on one of the varieties. The same treatments- the second, different variety- essentially no difference to the, to the non-treated seed, ok, so there appears to be a variety effect, and unfortunately it's not predictable. We don't have particular traits or...things that we can look at in a seed catalog and say right, this particular variety will respond to the seed treatment. And the other problem of course is that varieties turn over fairly quickly nowadays, so that we can't do a couple years of research and then suggest to you that hey, this particular variety if you use it will respond very well to seed treatment, so. That's one of the things that we noticed. One of the other things that really stand out to you here is that Allegan is a...very strongly performing location, ok, in terms of seed treatment, ok. So, the fungicide-only, on this first variety, we were up to nearly five bushels. Fungicide including insecticide and nematicide; we're up to ten bushels in this particular variety. And the second variety here, even the fungicide only, we're at eight bushel bump; and when we include the insecticide, we are over fifteen bushels; and the full package, nearly fifteen bushels as well, ok. So Allegan, there's something very particular about Allegan county, and we typically see these year in and year out. Allegan is a very high-performing location in terms of the seed treatment. So we're really trying to dig into that in more detail at the moment with additional...testing in the greenhouse and [INAUDIBLE] the weather station data that we have and soil type data as well. So, if we were to just take this data and average all of the different yield responses, obviously Allegan is going to sort of draw up the response, ok. But, just if we're able to do that, that averaging across all varieties and location, for the fungicide-only, we see about a one bushel bump, ok, so we're above [INAUDIBLE] break even. With the inclusion of insecticide or the full package, we're at an average about a three bushel bump, so again, above that break-even in 2013, you know, for the average of all sites. Obviously not all of them are high-responsive sites. 2014 was quite different. And, this made sense to us, ok. So what happened in 2014; we had a lot of rain early, so planting was quite delayed, and in some instances we were weeks behind, you know, planting, and yeah, we were on par with a lot of growers across the state; we had, we just had late planting right across the state with respect to, you know. Due to the weather conditions that we experienced. So of course, you know, if we look at other research that's done in other locations, this is a very common trend. You typically see a greater response from the seed treatment if we're able to plant early, because that's when the seed- seedlings are under the greatest stress. Because the soil temperatures are cool, there's a lot of moisture, potentially; and that's when we see the response from the- the seed treatments in terms of protecting that seedling. So it was very flat in 2014; if you average everything, we're basically at a zero. Nothing was statistically different in this particular graphic here, so even, even those are trending negative and not statistically significant. 2015 I was a little bit surprised. We were certainly on par with the statewide planting averages in terms of planting date. So I was expecting slightly more positive results than what we saw. This is just summarizing all varieties by location, just 'cause it- so many, so many varieties in the particular study; it's too much to really show you in one slide. But again, what we do see, interestingly, is Allegan, the first, you know, bar here...again, is a responsive site. We don't really see it with the fungicide only, but when we include that insecticide, we're up to about three and a half bushel bump. With full package we're 4.7 or 4.8 bushel increase over the naked seed. And then quite a few of the other locations, some of them even trend negative; we're not sure exactly why that is, but some of them do trend negative. So if we're to average them in 2015, there wasn't as positive as what I was expecting. The fungicide-only; we've got a 0.3 bushel bump. The fungicide-insecticide package; we got 0.27, so we got 0.3 again. The full package; we were close to a half bushel bump across all locations, all varieties. This slide is showing you what happened in Allegan...just of the four different varieties, so again, it's getting back to this theme of, different varieties respond differently, OK, to the seed treatment and we don't...unfortunately there's no clear way of predicting which one will respond favorably. So variety 1 was our, certainly our best performer in terms of being responsive to that seed treatment. So, the fungicide-insecticide...four bushel bump. Full package, right about...close to eleven bushel bump, ok, so pretty significant. Variety 2 was was not statistically significant. No increase over the naked seed. Variety 3; somewhat, very marginal. Variety 4, again, seemed to respond at this particular location, but not statistically significant. Using this particular analysis. Okay. So there's a couple of things we need to really be aware of when we're looking at this, this data set. You know, these are trials that are conducted at the variety performance trial locations. So, on average, we're certainly on par with planting date across the state, ok. We're not super early, ok. So we're, we tend to be early; mid-May, thereabouts. OK. If you're a grower that intends to plant any earlier than that, you're gonna be more likely to see a benefit from the seed treatment, ok. Unfortunately it's not possible for us to do a planting date study at all of these locations; that would be really fantastic at getting the, you know, maybe the last week of April, and really push the system and see if we can see a greater response to the seed treatments. The other thing to really keep in mind here is that...the planting population that we're using is about 158, 160 thousand seed per acre. So we're on the sort of moderate to high end of seeding rate. If you're trying to do cut on costs by trimming down the seeding rate, then you're more likely to see a benefit from the seed treatment. And that's the case because as you decrease the number of seed that are going in, obviously you can't afford to lose more of those seed. If we're at 160 or higher seeding rate, we can certainly afford to lose more of the seed that is scattered throughout the field and still...still have just, you know, fine stands, ok. If we're really pushing that...that...pushing the envelope in terms of lowering the seeding rate, that's when we're more likely to see a positive response. So just to summarize it in terms of the plant stands or plant populations that were out there and where we saw responses, of 2014 and 2015 anyway, the fungicide-only, we did not see a statistically significant improvement on the plant population past those two years across all locations. But where we include a fungicide plus insecticide, sixteen percent of those observations we see a statistically significant improvement in stand, ok. And where we have the full package, we see about a thirty percent of instances where we see a plant population stand. So again, if we were pushing back...planting, say, 120, 140 thousand seeds per acre, you know, 30 percent of the time, you might be making sure that we, that we are protecting those fewer seed that we're putting out there. And more likely to see an economic response from the seed treatments. Allegan was certainly the location with the most consistent yield response. So, you know, it appeared that at least that location should certainly, you know, be considering a seed treatment every year, ok, and I've covered those last two points in this slide. Ok. So the last couple of slides here and then we'll certainly take some questions. So, Soybean SDS in Michigan- I just wanted to point out that we haven't been actively sort of looking for disease for the last couple years. A couple additional samples came in this last year from farmers and the Extension agents. And so we've confirmed a couple more counties that are highlighted there in pink. Certainly, if we spent time and really drove around in the summer, I'm sure we could find it in many of these other counties. Again, just typically what we see is that the southern tier counties tend to have more fields that are infested. And the disease severity tends to be more severe, ok. But our concern is that with time, disease appears to be progressing Northward. So we're gonna see more severe disease occurring in more fields further North in time, so just something to keep on your radar. So, here's the disease cycle. The fungus overwinters spores in the soil, it infects the plant, then just colonizes the root; causes root rot. But then it also produces a toxin. The fungus never moves above the soil line, but it stays in the root, and it produces a toxin that moves up into the foliage, ok. And typically, we don't see it early, like in this instance. Typically it occurs kind of light reproductive stages; that's where we see these very striking chlorosis in the process to the leaves, ok, and it can cause premature leaf drop. The spores can be produced en masse, again, down on those taproots, which can be observed as blue masses of spores. Just a slide to demonstrate difference between a very susceptible variety in the front, so a six row plot here that's twenty foot long, compared to a very good partially resistant one behind that. So, cultivar selection is very important in terms of management. In terms of chemical management, Bayer has the same treatment coat iLeVO, and that's shown on this left-hand side; these two rows here, we have a much fuller canopy, these particular two rows, so it's a basic treatment plus ILeVO. Where we just have the basic treatment only, the canopy is much shorter and we have far less vigorous soybeans. In terms of yield, then, with respect to ILeVO, this is 2014 data, and we see this pretty much year in and year out; sometimes even better responses than this. There are a number of different cultivars here, just comparing the base seed treatment when we include that ILeVO, so, we're just looking at the difference again, right, so when we do include the ILeVO, we see up to 5 or 8 or more bushel protection from that ILeVO chemistry. And we typically see that about 80% or 90% of the cultivars respond favorably to that ILeVO seed treatment. There's always a couple that we just don't see that positive response. But across the board we typically see a pretty good response from different varieties. One other thing just to be aware of; that Soybean Cyst Nematode is also on the label for ILeVO. Again, unfortunately it's not a silver bullet. What I'm showing you here is the Soybean Cyst Nematode reproduction ratio. We're looking at the final Soybean Cyst Nematode numbers divided by the initial, so [INAUDIBLE] SCN numbers at the start of the season, ok. So, if we had a ratio of 1, that means there's no net increase or decrease, right, so that we've got the same number of nematodes at the start of the season as you do at the end, ok. Down the end here, this variety number twelve, is a key variety...in terms of SCN resistance. So there's a [INAUDIBLE] resistance. And so we're actually able to decrease the amount of nematodes now that we're pressed on this particular variety. But, what I wanted to point out is the difference between ILeVO if you look at the base treatment. So we're looking at these reproduction ratios. ILeVO treatment on, in the blue, and just the base in red. So, typically across the board we see when we include the ILeVO treatment, we supress the amount of SCN reproduction. Sometimes it's quite striking. Not always. There's a couple of instances here where we don't see any benefit of not only from that ILeVO treatment, again; some instances where we see that the base treatment has no effect on SCN but the ILeVO treatment does help to suppress the amount of SCN reproductions, so that's a nice benefit from the ILeVO treatment. So just to summarize, then, and finish up, SDS managment recommendations. Certainly trying and prevent movement of infested soil under your property. If at all possible, power wash equipment, particularly if you're purchasing equipment and moving it distances; no point bringing new problems onto your farm. If you're not sure if it is SDS, send in a sample to the diagnostic lab and get that test. As I've shown you, resistant varieties are very helpful. ILeVO seed treatment can assist in terms of reducing the amount of SDS and protect yield. You don't have to have Soybean Cyst Nematode to get SDS, but if you have SCN present, that again, exacerbate the amount of disease that develops. Anything we can do to avoid compaction and improve drainage can help with SDS management. And there's potential for extended crop rotations, moving away from just corn and soy... into wheat or other crops can potentially reduce the amount of SDS that develops in the field. So with that, I just want to thank our commodity groups' funding that helps support the research work that we do, and other people on the slide here, and I'd be very happy to take questions. >> Speaker 1: Like to thank everybody for their participation; this is the end of the webinar and we'll say good night.