MSU Extension Irrigation

 So there you go. Yeah. You gotta talk about what at the top of which screen that's the issue. So I'll set to get started. Sure. So hello out there. My name is Lyndon Kelley I worked for Michigan State University and Purdue Extension. Dr. Younsuk Dong and I put together this webinar series. We're in the second of six webinars talking about a number of irrigation management practices and information to help producers. Whether you're getting started or whether you're managing existing systems. This information's available at number of locations. If you look at MSU and put in irrigations, webinar series, you'll find in different locations. And currently Younsuk as Dr. Dong is working on putting that up at the Ag Engineering site. So we'll talk a little bit more about that. I get to do a little bit of a lead in here. Sort over the last seven days. There has been the haves and have-nots. Most of the state received really good rainfall in excess of crop needs. We'll talk about crop needs in a second. But roughly we came out with an inch and a half to an inch, 1.6 inches of water removal over the last seven days. And if we look at the colors there, if you're in the darker green or the yellows, you got that plus. So you've got removal, crop removal plus summed to contribute to soil moisture reserve. If you're in those darker blue areas are the lighter green. You were probably close to getting enough rainfall for about half of the crop water need. So you've either started irrigating or should be starting irrigating or you're depleting the soil reserve some, which is fine. It's good to use as soil reserve up as long as we can feed the crop in the end, it's sort of like a checking account. If you're drawing out and you're not putting in, your balance is going to go down. You just don't want to go down to the point that we're actually stressing the crop. Then we'll go on from there. So we talk about how much water do we get and then how much crop removal we had. If you look at the last seven days and we're using the Federals, a weather station services information here. We have links to them in that will link to it in the chat. But basically they put out a seven day total, the last seven days of use, and that came up to 1.34. But the reminder of the picture there of grass being watered, this is that how much grass plant would have used? Six inch grass would have used. And over the time we've calculated that out to be a greater number four crops like corn or soybeans. So we use this crop co-efficient, convert that number in both corn and soybeans have reached the near their peak. This is a stressful time for irrigators if we don't have rain because both crops, corn is towards the end of its peak water use and will be dropping here and a couple of weeks. And soybeans are just now coming into their highest value time as far as importance of irrigation. And think from R3 on. So it's a critical time. So if I take that 1.34 that they show us on the map and take it times our crop co-efficient. We have that 1.6 inches that I told you we need. Some of us got that, some didn't soybeans the same way. And matter of fact, when we look at soybeans, We're right at that same point, about 1.2 crop co-efficient starting in R3 and going right on through R6. And we want to think about later stages is when soybean yields are made. And that's the important thing here. So that takes us through just a quick update of irrigation scheduling or crop water needs that are there. If you have questions, there's some pretty good fact sheets that we put online at the irrigation websites talking about irrigation scheduling tools. From there, I get to introduce Dr. Younsuk Dong. He's a new official irrigation specialist from Ag Engineering this year. And he's going to be talking to us about some irrigation management practices. Can stop sharing my screen if I can. Thank you. You've seen the my presentations. And thank you. All right. Thank you. My name is Younsuk Dong. I'm a Irrigation Specialist from Biosystem Agriculture Engineering Departments. So with today I'm going to talk about how we can improve irrigation water use efficiency using a sensor technology with to them and today focusing on the soil moisture sensors. So the soil moisture sensors has been used for for irrigation main band because it can help us to understand the waterflow in soil and improve irrigation water use efficiency. The soil moisture sensor can estimate or the measure the amount of moisture in the soil. And just by knowing the amount of moisture and soil, it can help us determine how much do you irrigate it and when to irrigate them and the rethink their growing season. The observation of soil moisture can be very useful on, in my thing, of crop water use. And this slide shows some of the types and the shape of its soil moisture sensors that are commercially available. And the right photo it shows is how we install the soil moisture sensors for different depth. So there are many companies who sell the soil moisture sensor equipment on and data logger systems that they are loggers can continuously record the sensor values and and that Irrometer there, there's some, some companies sell the handheld reading tool which you, which doesn't and continues to be Corded. But you can take that device to the sensor and read at the moisture level at that point, at that event on the time. The companies are the Campbell Scientific, The Meter Group are Irrometer, Spectrum, Sentek, Davis, and Onset am sure there are a couple other companies making and sell the soil moisture sensor equipment. And the lot of companies now, they, they provide a web service that allow user to look at the data in real time. the benefit of having a using the sphere time data monitoring are that allow user to see and download. data remotely using a computer with a a connection. And it also allowed to see whether there are any problem with the sensor with beating the, beating the fill. These are just the example, the Zentra Cloud from Meter Group, and IrriMAX  from the Sentek system. So I'd like to briefly talk about some of the terminology that are useful for irrigation scheduling. first moist saturation. The saturation means the also a pore spaces are filled with the water. And the wilting point indicate the soil moisture level where there is no upper water for the crop. And the field capacity means that the maximum amount of water that soil can hold after drainage. So on the right graph X is describe the soil texture and y axis divide much water content. And the blue line there represents the field capacity, and the red line represents the wilting point. So the area between the blue and red line is called the available water. So one thing to note here is that the, the heavier the soil, the more available water and the lighter the soil and the less of the water. So I'd like to share some of benefit of using the soil moisture sensors. So the first benefit is it can help to determine when to irrigate it. Or here's the here's just an example. So this graph shows the soil moisture sensor data. And edges see the moisture level decrease over time because crop is using water and the evaporation and  based on the field capacity. And we can point up the soil or we can set the range of irrigation trigger point. So in the upper right corner there is a table that shows the general number of capacity wilting point, and water for each soil type. But these values may vary depending on the size of the specific condition. Or typically irrigation is recommended at 30 to 60 percent depletion of urban water in the soil. Depending largely on the crops tolerance to the drought stress, the crop stage of development, and the capacity of irrigation system. Or in this example, the irrigation trigger point was set to 14.5 percent for this sandy loam soil. So when as you see there, when the moisture level was approaching to the irrigation trigger level, the irrigation was applied, the water is applied. So the another benefit of using soil moisture sensor is they can help to determine the how much of irrigation could be applied to this, to the crop. So here is the example of calculation of a band of irrigation that could be applied to this tomato using the soil moisture sensors. This example assume that the root for tomato is 24-inch and the soil texture is the loamy sand. So as you see here, three soil moisture sensors are installed at 4, 12, and 20 inch depth. The sensor at four-inch, that represents from 0 to 8 inch soil then, which is A zone. And the sensor at 12 inch depth, that represents from eight to 16 inch through that, which is a B zone. And sensory 20 inch, that represents from 16 to 24 inches sole depth, which is C zone, And the readings from the soil moisture sensor, are 8, 9, 9% for, for top 20 inch depth sensor respectively. So now we need to calculate the current over water in this root zone using the sensor values, which is multiplying the sensor values by each soil representative zone. So after you add the whole profile, the available water in this crop root joint is 2.08 inch and with the assumption that the capacity is 12 percent for loamy sand, we can calculate the maximum water-holding capacity in this root zone, which is multiplying the capacity that is 12 percent by the rooting depth which is 24 inch. So which came out 2.88 inch. So the difference between the maximum water-holding capacity and the calculator of level water in the root zone is the amount of irrigation that could be applied to this fill. So therefore, approximately 0.8 inch of water could be applied to the field, assuming there is no rainfall in the forecast. Or typically we recommend that about 80 percent of this 0.8 inch because we want to have some room and capacity for the rainfall. So a little over six 1/10th inch of water is recommended to this fill. So this is just one example that shows how we can use the sensor data to determine an estimate the irrigation amount. Or another benefit is the soil moist. The benefit of the soil moisture sensor is it can help to detect the over irrigation. We recommend installing a soil moisture sensor right below the root zone. Because it can help us to understand if the water move below the root zone. Or this graph shows the soil moisture sensor data from 6, 18 and 36 inch depth. And and this example was from the cornfield. Or as you see in this example, the green line which is preferred that soil moisture level spiked after an irrigation, which means that the water has moved below the three-foot depth. Or here's another example. So in this tomato plow, we used the soil watch ten soil moisture sensors for this side and re-install the sensors as 6, 12, and 24 inch there. And we record the soil moisture level hourly. The typical tomato root system grossed up to 24 inch depth. So if the sensor at 24 inch depth spike it, indicate over irrigation So as you see, this grabbed the 24 inch depth soil moisture sensor, which is the blue line spiked after each of irrigation. So the producers, producer adjust the irrigation amount and we continue monitor the site after the producer adjust their irrigation amount. Now we don't see the spike at 24 inch depth or now it can be solved the previous graph. So this is another example of that, shows the benefit of using soil moisture sensors for irrigation management. I like to briefly talk about some of the consideration when they're studying the soil moisture sensors. Because the soil moisture sensor measures only a small volume of soil surrounding the sensors. So installation is very, very important and perform the carefully. So the one is there must be good contact between the sensor and the soil to avoid creating an air gap. So try and store the sensor firmly and minimize the beginning when you are, when you install sensors. And the depth sensor should be considered based on the crops root that. And we recommend to install a sensor at the shallow depth, so that because this can be beneficial to monitor the crop at early growth stage. Or lastly I'd like to mentioned that we have our Extension Bulletin that has more detailed information on how to improve irrigation water use efficiency using soil moisture sensors. We added the Extension Bulletin. That talks about how we can improve the center pivot system, irrigation system. And these bulletins can be downloaded through our website. So please check our website. Last one last point is so that you can find all the recorded webinar irrigations, Webinar Series videos through our BAE irrigation website, which is egr.msu.edu/ bae/water/irrigation So you can create irrigation webinar series and then either on the menu bar or the quick link. So when you go to the website, you can watched all the videos that we have, recorded. So with that, if you have any question regarding irrigation and sensor technology, please feel free to contact us. Here's, here are our email address. So should I take questions? If there's any question or should Lyndon. Go ahead. Next presentation. Are Younsuk, Can you hear me? Yeah. We need to encourage people to put questions in the chat. I don't see any. Marty having a problem with this camera. How about if we try to get more of the questions at the end, then sounds good. So next presentation is Lyndon Kelley. We'll be talking about where and what and why do we need to irrigate a Michigan to Indiana? I need to swap screens again or first. You need the full screen. There we go. And swap screen. Swap the screens. Yes. Oh, there you go. Hey, we've seen this slide before. My name's Lyndon Kelley. If you look up the recording from last time we started out with this slide in one of my presentations. If the basic concept that rainfall in Michigan and Indiana doesn't keep up with optimum crop, use, water use, or growth. An optimum yields. It usually falls short sometime in late June. And we're looking at 30-year weather data here. So it's very, very streamlined. Use red in the red and rainfall and the blue line. And somewhere around late June we usually run out of water to keep maximum plant productivity and we need to add. So what, when we start talking about where we irrigate, it's where we can actually find that water to make up the difference and where that yield increase is enough to have the economic advantage to pay for the irrigation equipment that is required to do this. So one of the things that you see that's highly correlated is this recharge. And it's not specifically the recharge, although that really helps drive that water availability for irrigation. But it's the sandy soils. Sandy soils have a couple of advantages for us. They drain very well and they have low amounts of runoff. That means that we are recharging that aquifer. Anytime we don't have enough plant water use at the top to use the water, we're recharging it. Two things can happen to rainfall. If it falls on soils that are not very permeable, then it can run off and we'll have ditches in rivers and streams will, will get most of that immediate water or a lot of it. Or we can have very sandy, poorest soils that infiltrate that rainfall water and make it available for plant material plus rebuild the acquifer for in that down season when we don't have plant material. So of course, Michigan and Indiana use different scales for this. But if you notice there's a band that crosses Northwest Indiana up through Michigan. And that represents both of those eight to 10 counties in those quarters of the states where they meet in the darker green and the Michigan map and the darker blue and I'm sorry, darker green in the Indiana map, darker blue and the Michigan map. Those represent the heavily, heavily irrigated portion of both states that Michigan area. We'll talk a little bit about numbers. But the important thing to, to see is that our recharge rates are 10, 12 inches, maybe even as high as 14 inches in those areas. So acre for acre and foot for foot. We're putting down ten to 14 inches of water each year. That helps make water available in that aquifer readily available and sustainable for the crop water use, which tends to be about half of that, six to seven inches per year. So it's a very sustainable use of that resource. So where do we actually look at a couple of people on I looked at the list from Indiana, I'm sorry for those into the Indiana people I keep it short. Get to the  spot questions that we're going to talk about later. I just covered Michigan here. But we have Michigan's greatest irrigated counties are down along that Southwest Indiana border. And with the exception of Montcalm County, which used to be our second most irrigated County, but it's dropped in the last couple of years to our third most irrigated County. We have 500,000 irrigated acres in 2007 10 years later we're at 670 thousand irrigated acres statewide in Michigan. That's about an expansion of a little over 2% per year, two and a quarter percent. If you look at that time period, it was faster from 2007 to 2012. Most of that came because of the the drive in the 2012 year because of the drought. But either way we've we've works, we're expanding about 2% per year. St. Joe has traditionally been the highest irrigated area, but if you notice, the expansion is slowed down and the adjacent counties Branch and Cass, each side of St. Joe County had been expanding faster at almost 20 percent per year. And then as you work on down, the other thing that's important to see in this chart, as we get towards the bottom of the 10 or 11 most irrigated counties, we see fairly fast rates of expansion. Further north. Counties that were sandy soils that traditionally we didn't have as much crop intensive crop interest and are now coming to be the investment place that people are starting to look towards expansion that Mescota accounting and Gratiot. Over the last 10, 12 years have seen more interest in irrigation expansion because of that. Same thing's happening in Indiana. They're expanding that a little rate of about 2.5% per year. Mostly along the northern area, with the exception of Knox County, their melon capital of the world. They say they are anyway, down by Terre Haute, Indiana in the southwest corner, making up their second most irrigated County and an expansion area that's also above that 2.5%. So we talk about that irrigation and Michigan and Indiana, what's driving it? Yes, it's the western states running out of water. A lot of interests. There's some big discussions that will be coming on during August here in California about whether they're going to cut the availability of water for agriculture. And that has a bad thing for the people that are in agriculture in California. They end up switching crops, going to tree fruits that almonds and things that take less total water. They get rid of the production that has the highest water need per dollar. That tends to be the dairy farming. So the happy cows in California may have to go to West and then get a coat. But we tend to believe those things that need more water to areas that had more available water. So we expect to see an expansion in the vegetable industry, the seed bird, seed production industry, other specialty crops, medical crops, some of the other things that are being produced at high dollar contracts. And we've seen an expansion in forage and brain contracts. Tied a lot to the specialty feeds where we're looking at non-GMO feed's and to the dairy industry. It's all about risk and risk from two major factors. Yes, we irrigate to avoid drought risk reducing water damage to our crop yields. But it's also about controlling other risks on sandy soils. We have much less chance of reducing yield from delay from the late planting relayed through fieldwork. Typical seed corn field has 17 passes of work that needs to happen at a fairly timely fashion. And when you think about it, that's 17 times that we could get washed out or if we didn't drain the soil very well. So that's what it's all about, controlling that risk. So that leads to what, why don't we see more expansion of irrigation? Well, this list was put together by a group of farmers that we're working with me on sort of a long-term where where should Extension go. And they were a lot of people that weren't in the seed corn area of the seed corn being dominated in Cass, Branch and St. Joe County in Michigan, and counties just south of that in Indiana. And they say, that group said, Well, we should have more seed corn contracts and more vegetable crop production contracts. Because that will bring about more expansion of the irrigation industry and greater increase profit potential for producers. That could be a little bit of a chicken or the egg, whether the irrigation comes before the seed corn contracts and especially crowd contracts or vice versa. The low prices and commodities, those lows get to the point where we can't make money and you have a higher investment once you've added irrigation. So if you're losing money, you've got more at risk. That makes that, that keeps us from expanding. Knowing those lows cycles in the prices may cause losses. Irrigation yields, we'd like to see all of our crops have a boost in yield so that they actually profit from it. But in a lot of situations in a crop rotation, one or two crops raised in that four-year rotation are making the payments. And the rest are sort of just keeping a stolen from a hydrology spot standpoint. And one of the major reasons we won't see irrigation in a lot of the Central Indiana area and the heavier areas in the thumb of Michigan is that the ground limited groundwater availability. The issues of impacting neighbor wells with deep irrigation wells. We have some history up in the base of the thumb in Michigan where that happened. The unstable availability of water from rivers, lakes, streams and ditches in dry years, making them not a predictable use of our source of water at the time that the highest profitability is available. And then drain each little limits production more than drought. So there's some areas that we see that heavier soils that we, the irrigation isn't going to it. So I can get in the field sooner. We need to do drainage first and then you look at irrigation. And then last but not least, we see those political and social things that keep us from expanding. Governmental restrictions on water use. We hear a lot about registrations and the difficulty and the timing and how that impacts expansion of the irrigation industry. Risk of new laws. And we hear that a lot. Sometimes it's not actually the law. It's that they may do this or are we going to end up paying for water, those types of things? And then just the general statement, a lot of neighbors, hate irrigation. It's very surprising in 2012 when we did miss meetings with in communities talking about expanding irrigation, almost half the audience would show up trying to figure out how to keep irrigation from expanding in their neighborhood. So, so it's, it's, there's some issues that are there. As far as availability. Both Michigan in Indiana have on their respective large volume water use Sites. Maps that talk about glacial deposits. If you notice, we talk about 500 gallons being sort of the most common irrigation well for field crops, 200 gallons or less for trickle irrigation. There's a lot of places in both states that we can have trickle irrigation and be able to support 30-40 acres. But we're not going to be able to support a 100 acre field, crop field. That band, the dark blues in the Michigan map, the dark greens and blues in Indiana map shortest shows that diagonal pattern between these two states that are the optimum prime areas. When you, early in the seventies, the two major seed corn companies looked at these maps and decided to put their major investments in processing facilities for seed corn, right in that Misha Misha walk. Kalamazoo area, right? Constantine, Michigan having the two largest production plants in the United States. So it a lot is based on that availability, whether there's water there for you or not. But you also notice there's a lot more areas that water's available then areas that we're currently irrigating. That same group we talked about before talking about why it wasn't expanding. Put together a list of that ideal situation for irrigation. And they were quick to say 160 acre fields. 160 acre fields are the cheapest and most economical to port equipment on. Notice this a center pivot irrigation. I had a group work and a trickle irrigation. They'd say just good soils close to labor. Flat land in both cases takes out a lot of the inaccuracies. Sandy loam soils because they're well drained and they're water-holding capacity to be able to keep 3 to four weeks of water availability and the low side. But with added with irrigation. They were supplementing the available water that's held in the soil and the rainfall? Yes. Sandy soils to drain at least an inch of water it away in a day. Deep wells. That are capable of pulling 900 gallons a minute or in that range to support that a 160 acres. And we'd like to pull that water in an area that we're not have Ting to lift it more than 30 feet. That's an edge and an energy savings issue. A lot of that area that's in those dark blues or those ideal areas, waters 34 or less from the surface. So you'll have minimal pumping costs. We'd like to see the wells go about anywhere we wanted to in the fields so we can put them so that there was little pumping cost from the source of the water to the pivot point where we feed the system from? Yes, they'd like to see three-phase power. So you'd say, well, if we expand three-phase power, are we going to expand irrigation well, to a certain degree, we make it much easier because that's a second major expense in the irrigation. Investment is going to be that power source on an annual basis. Getting along with the neighbors. A lot of the expansion in the vegetable industry and the seed corn industry happens when neighbors get together and pool and I'll go one direction so the companies can afford to have people working in that area and that driving major issue areas. Little competition between companies, just like the Meijer store and the Walmart store being on the same road at same ended town. You have a little competition there and to being higher values to everyone. And same thing from the seed corn industry or the vegetable industry. And then wrote infrastructure we like to see are available on rows because we use a lot of production. We're going to talk in a few weeks about economics, but bigger fields are easier and cheaper to irrigate. We'll be talking about that in the future. And also in the future. Being, this is your warning to get ready. Also in the future, we're going to be talking about energy costs and the fact that three-phase power, so still a much cheaper and much more advantageous to automation for irrigation. So that's about what I have time for. I get the honor of introducing Dr. Dean Baas. He is Michigan State University's irrigation guru. I'm sorry, not irrigation. Cover crop guru that'll talk to us about our cover crops in irrigation can work together. And just Dean should be a, let me get my screen up here. Okay, How's I look? Good. I hope I've at the end. That's what I get for going through my slides. Okay, I'll start this again. There we go. Okay. Thank you. We'll end. And like he said, I'm Dean Baas, I'm the sustainable ag educator  for Michigan State University Extension, working cover crops and soil help a little bit of organic agriculture. Going to spend a little time talking about cover crops in irrigation. There's benefits to irrigation that can come from cover crops. And there's benefits cover crops that can come from irrigation. So we're going to touch on both of those a little bit. But before we start, every way he says, You gotta talk about what are the potential benefits of cover crops. And there's a lot of benefits. I'm not going to go through all of these. Most farmers are aware of the benefits that come from cover crops. But I think some of the top ones are soil health, Resiliency, nutrient source, a retention weed management. And there's more, I think we're moving towards to spend less time talking about the benefits and more time helping you figure out how to manage, manage cover crops. So real quickly what farmers are saying about cover crops? This is from the latest CTIC Sehr Cover Crop National Survey. And I find these interesting because it's interesting to see how things move. You don't have to go back too many years. And if you asked any farmer what, what is your major reason for growing cover crops, they would all say erosion. That was always at the top of the list and then it would trickle down from there. In recent years it has moved to the soil health, improving soil health, which is now the number one reason that people have grown. But in this recent survey, what I find interesting is look at the second one now is weed management. I think that's an indication of the herbicide resistant weeds that we're seeing and farmers are looking to cover crops for some help in managing herbicide resistant weeds. So now erosion has moved all the way to third in the list where it was number one that it moved to two and now it's at three. So that's kinda where, what farmers are saying are the reasons why they're, they're using cover crops. Cover crops in irrigation. Like I say, cover crops provide benefits to irrigated systems. Those are primarily increased soil health and soil organic matter. And what that leads to is increased water infiltration, increase soil water holding capacity. And if you can get more water holding capacity, then that's going to delay the onset for the need of irrigation. So there should be some dollars saved there. On the other side, irrigation systems provide benefits to cover crops because you get better and more reliable establishment. Because you can provide the moisture for germination and growth. Where on dry land, you're basically going to take what you get that time a year. Lot of times into August, it starts getting dry. And that can be a real problem for getting cover crops established. Excuse me. Little bit to look at soil organic matter. I'm not going to get dive into this in detail. But this is, this is the components of soil organic matter. And you can see anywhere from about a third to half of your soil organic matter is stabilize soil organic matter. And as you see here that stabilize soil organic matter, that acts like a sponge and it can absorb six times its weight in water. That is a big increase in water-holding capacity compared to other soil fractions. And what that's really doing for you, I like to say that's increasing the size of your container. It gives you a spot to put more water when you get it. So whether that's coming from the spring melt or spring rains, if you have a place to put that water instead of having it run off. If you have a smaller container, then that water is going to be available to you for to use prior to having to go to irrigation. Now the other thing to remember about that, that's not just a one-shot deal. If you've got a larger container and your crops or removing water from that container, then the next time you get a rain, you have more room to store a heavy rain again, which again, could reduce the amount of irrigation that you would need to do. This is another way of kind of showing the same thing. This was work that was done by Hudson and 990 for and you can see for three different soil types how the inches of water in the top eight inches of soil changes with increase soil organic matter. So if you can double your soil organic matter, you're probably going to get an additional half an inch of water holding ability in that top eight inches of soil. We'll spend a little time on this one. I found this really interesting. This was a study that was done in France. I think it explains a lot, a lot of the stuff we may see happening with, with cover crops as far as for establishment, variable establishment, some years they seem to do the others. They don't. Excuse me. This table shows the 36 different cover crops. And on the y-axis over here, the work was done on base water potential, but I can't relate to that. So I converted that to percent of field capacity. And what this shows is the percent of field capacity that's required to germinate different cover crops. You can kinda see why the grasses are fairly popular. And I think the reason why radish may be popular in Michigan is because they'll, they will germinate at as low as 20 percent per cereal rye up into probably about the 25 percent feel capacity. And as these go up, they need more and more water. To terminate. Where irrigation helps this out is you can put the water on that you need to germinate the cover crop that you're interested. And that can provide the most benefits for you. Where a dry land fire were. Maybe I will pick the cover crop, but are they going to be able to get it established and get it grow and are they going to get them rain that they need to do that? What's also interesting is if you look a lot of the clovers and the legumes are up here kind of in this 40 percent feel capacity range. And I think that kind of explains why some people have such. Some people have really good luck with Clover and some people have poor luck with it. I think it really comes down to do they have the moisture to germinate it and get it go on. And this also explains why you see a lot of variability in these cover crop mixes. If you think about a mixture that has maybe five or six of these cover crops in their legumes and grasses. If you don't have the soil moisture there for the legumes, the grasses are nine to germinate and they're going to get ahead of your legumes and probably crowd out the legumes if you have the moisture there, everything will probably germinate fine and have less competition with each other. But I thought this is just kind of an interesting way to look at another requirement that cover crops have if you want to be successful and you want to establish a cover crops, you need the moisture there to get him germinated and get them going. The other thing they pointed out with this study is that a lot of us related to, to the density and the C. Do you have a larger or a medium size, fairly light seed like a grass seed or a really small, dense see like red clover, crimson clover. It's just going to take more water to germinate that smaller, denser see. So if you're looking to pick cover crops are particularly at the time a year we're currently, and I kinda drew a box around the time of year that we're just going into. And it's kind of a period where you have a lot of cover crop options. I'm not going to go through all these, but just wanted to let you know that the Midwest cover crop council has a decision tool. So if you go to www that MCC, see that MSU.edu, you can use this decision tool you can put in Michigan for the state or Indiana. You can put in a county that URI, and this happens to be the county average, but you can do your specific county and refine the information. You can select the goals you're after with your cover crops. Erosion, fighting nitrogen source, nitrogen scavenging, we'd buy. Those are all available goals. And then you can see what cover crops meet those goals and then what the reliable planting periods are for those. Though, this is a tool you can use to kinda sort through what you might, might want to put in this TV or this, this is a good time a year after wheat, after early harvested vegetables, you got plenty of growing season left, you got plenty, uh, he laughed and if you're a delegator, you got plenty of water left. So you can really maximize the effect of, of a cover crop to build soil organic matter. We'd fighting whatever you might be after. If you are doing cover crops after we eat and you just don't want to mess with all that. We do have a recipe for, which basically spells out exactly how to use oats and, and radish mix. After week when you're going to be going into corn, soybeans or corn. And you can find that at the website listed there is on the MSU cover crop page. Other cover crop resources. I recommend the MSU cover crop website covercrops.MSU.edu, There's Michigan specific information there. Always recommend the Midwest Cover Crop cause website. Again, a lot of information and decision tools that can be helpful there. And don't forget the MSU cover crop key. That whole group of people you see on the right there are all on the cover crop team and they're available to answer your questions. I tell people don't be afraid to call us. It's our job. So call us and ask us your question or get some advice from us. You can find the cover crop team list on that cover crops that MSU at ETE website as well. So I'm going to add that there. And if there is my email and phone number, which I will put in the chat box as soon as I get done sharing my screen. And so if you want to call me or email me, you can. And do we have any questions? Lynden or does it look like it? So I think we will move on to Dr. Marty Chilvers, who's going to talk to you about Tar Spot? Next thing, sorry, I just had to find my mark on. Alright, and say, let's talk about tar spot. And if you have any questions, please put them in the boxes. This we can chat about them. Okay, let's get started. So I think most people are probably aware of what tar spot looks like. Just a couple of quick notes on scouting at the moment, and it's definitely out there and a lot of fields. But for the most part we're talking about one or two spots on a leaf. Generally not lower part leaf and down, I would say. And that's going to change pretty rapidly, but they're hard to see, right? They are very small those initial lesion, so scouting is, is kind of difficult for this disease. Unfortunately, it's here, some ovule and the residue, sorry, it's not going anyway. We're not waiting for it to blow up from the South or anything like that. It's here in Michigan. And the big thing that sets this year apart from others is that it's being continually sort of spreading across the landscape. In terms of conditions that promote disease. It's thought from the work that was done in Latin America, it's thought that they sort of generally cooler monthly temperature is a favorable we're sort of questioning that at this point, is it really an upper limit in terms of the temperature? I think the most important thing, and this is where irrigation is involved is the leaf wetness. So as soon as we get about seven hours of leaf wetness, that's enough for those spores to germinate, in fact the plant and begin that the whole disease cycle over again. And it only takes about two weeks to guard from an infection too, when you see those black spots and then producing more of those black spots. So it can happen pretty rapidly, foggy days and then of course, a lot of precipitation. We're sort of some factors that they saw when they spoke in Latin America, looked at so much risk factors, map that onto the US. And surprisingly, this is pretty much what we're seeing today. In Michigan. Around like Michigan is really a hot, hotbed for tough spot. This is just predicted range where tell us what's going to be a problem. It's found in Florida too, but just in the winter time. So in terms of where we found that this year, well, those yellow counties here are showing you where it's where we are and reports if conformations I wouldn't be surprised if it's present in all of those counties in gray. It's really just a matter of spending the time to look for it. It's been found in Ontario as of last year and this year as well. So it's continuing to spread. And as I said before, initially when this thing got started back in 2015 that was found in Northern Illinois and Indiana. And that's sort of been a hotbed that now we've saved some pretty heavily, heavy levels of infection in other parts of Michigan. So we're, we're certainly very concerned In the weather is going to be a big driver. Bruce MacKellar worked on pulling this, this set of images together with Jeff Stuck. And I thought it was really just sort of instructional about how irrigation can potentially promote disease. So this is back in 20, I attain these, these aerial images and say that year we had a lot of very frequent rainfall during the summer and, or the cost conditions, conditions that promoted continued leaf wetness. And that's ideal for this passport and a lot of other fungal disease organisms too. There are three different varieties planted in here. So this just supplanting map of where those other hybrids where we're planted. And then you can see some of that, that hybrid difference is showing up here in terms of the NDVI imagery, that's sort of the crop health or chlorophyll content imagery. So you can see that band is on the hybrid. This green. A band might either be due to more resistance to toss ball, it will just having a lighter maturity hybrid is a couple of factors. But what I wanted to point to, something the person is able to pull together here with Jeff is the difference between irrigated in those dry corners, looking at that same hybrid, those irrigation events really drive disease. And you could say that with the, you know, the less healthy foliar foliage where those irrigation applications have been made. And if I'm remembering correctly, it was only two or three irrigation applications that when needed because it was just so wet in 2019. And that drives some pretty big differences here, somewhere in the order of 40 bushels between irrigated and non-irrigated. So irrigation can certainly exacerbate disease. Switch to 2019. And we can see a similar sort of patent happening in this particular field here. You can obviously see where that, that irrigation is reaching to in this particular field and the plant to shutdown much earlier because of that irrigation. Due to the heavy levels, a tough spot that a precedent there. I'll just note as well that this entire field had an application of fungicide it one. So a fungicide application doesn't eliminate disease by any means. But disease might have been a lot worse without that, that application, a fungicide. So what is different in 2019 to 2018 is that it was very it was obviously very wait. At the start of the season, we all had issues getting things planted. But then rainfall pretty much switched off for the rest of the season. So overall it was a pretty lights task by year. And this field needed that irrigation. So looking at the coal mine there, under the pivot, there was about 225 bushels and dry corners rule. We're losing about 40 bushels. Sorry, even though yes, we might have been driving disease, the corn plants still needed that moisture for development. So obviously it's gotta be a bit of a balance between providing water for crop growth but not creating leaf wetness conditions just to pragmatic disease, right? I understand this. It may be very, very limited options. A couple of other things that had happened that year in particular, I gotta call out move, scratch and have hedge, trying to figure out why One hybrid in one field looks terrible. That same hybrid in a neighboring field was fine, both irrigated. When we ask the farm and around and around about manure, about everything else that are being done. Everything appear to be the site. It turned out that that field that had very heavy disease, they had an issue with the the well for that particular field. And they just weren't able to pool the amount of water and sorry, in that field, our watering twice a week with just half an inch in the other field that had less disease, though going on with about one inch of water once a week. So that extra application, or the higher application frequency really drive disease and you could see it in the kernel depth, really kicking myself. I didn't take a good photo of that now, but it was really remarkable how that really affected disease. I've just got a slide in here from Lyndon and Lyndon can certainly chime in now or at the end, we close the end of time. But just thinking about how much water you should be putting down and being smart about that. Obviously not over irrigating where we've got runoff and other sorts of issues happening. But rather than many frequent lot applications thinking about putting on what the soil really needs and what the plants really can, can use. I think only irrigate is not going to like this. I don't mean that in this screenshot behind me too, we've got a system there where I've got overhead warblers and I've got drop nozzles. And those drop muscles have caused me a lot of headaches as well. Even on a 10 acre research pivot. We have breaks and all sorts of things. But hey, I just want to challenge that community. I mean, maybe we need to be thinking about irrigating to try to avoid watering the canopy. So you, behind me in that image, you know, I have a pivot where I've got drop nozzles on there. But I've also got the sprinklers across the top. I usually drop nozzles to try and missed the wheat. Um, that's in that photo gives us good head scab, right? Because we're irrigating too to create disease, right? And I've got those wobble is on now and I'm going to use that. I'm going to put on a tenth of an inch 90 today. I know we didn't get any Ryan yesterday that came through in my house about a mile away, but not at the farm. So I'm going to maybe put a tenth of an inch on that. I just to help drive Frog leaf spot on the soybean and the task spot on the colon so we can get a better evaluation of fungicides and other things. I understand there's issues with these drop nozzles. I'd be very, very interested in in working with anybody that would we be interested in maybe retrofitting a section to pivot to say how that, that affected foliar disease development. So in terms of task bot management, obviously there's nothing you can do about the weather. There's potentially some things we can do when we're irrigating and we want to be smart about that. Variety selection. Hybrid selection is going to be your number one tool. And I can't stress that enough. I know the companies do not have very good writings of material at the moment in the catalogs because it's such a relatively new disease and you're scrambling to get that data. So what I'm going to run through now just briefly is some fungicide trials that we did here. This is done in Decater Michigan and Van Buren County under irrigation. But we let the farm and just irrigate how we normally would. My understanding is around about an inch per week, very sandy soil. So we planted this May 4th, 2020. We had tough spot develop, just initiate like very, very small amounts. On July 17th, it was very, very hard to find in the ten acres, you know, we had four people walking through. We found one or two spots. Two weeks later, it was relatively easy to find. We put treatments on for this particular trial at that R1 timing. Well, let me let me talk you through one other trial we did first, sorry, my slides mixed up. So a fungicide timing trials. So he came in and put fungicides on in this particular field at different timings. We looked at VI, the 11, one, et cetera, through it, through the set there. So this is what we found and this is looking at the amount of disk tough spot disease that developed on the ear leaf. Okay. So the untreated is in blue here. It's kind of hidden as the highest value here in late August. And that finishes up in the top of the pack with you, some of these other treatments toward the end of the season. So just looking at this data, it looks like maybe that R3, maybe even that R4 timing might have been an optimal for fungicide timing for that field. Last year, just buy something at a disease on the elif. An application at R5 certainly looks lower. The start of September here. But you'll notice that we had some of the highest level of diseases in that particular treatment towards the in August. So we missed if we waited until our five, which would have been the 21st of August, it would have been too light for that epidemic that we're starting to build through July and very early August. So the R4 for treatment, it was one of those at the elite level that that appear to pan out the best. I'd be a little bit reluctant, perhaps the white that light in the game. But it was certainly interesting to say, and we've have same some years that a second application around about the 20th for August have, have protected around about 20 bushels, but that's under very specific, your disease really ramping up late in the season. But we certainly know that it's getting really expensive terribly putting two applications down, but that's, that's been interesting and something can we going to look at more? Okay, Now onto that sort of product comparison trial that we did, all spraying it on one and have yield data to go with this particular trial. So this is just how disease develops over time for those different treatments. Again, we spray these mid July, right? And there was very, very low levels and disease enough just to start doing some writings. The beginning of August in late August. And we really start to see some differences. The untreated were much heavier disease than, than those that received the fungicide application. This is another really important thing to think about stalk integrity. So where we did not put any fungicide down, about nearly, nearly 70 percent of those stocks were just falling over once we did the push tests, they're just pushing those corn stalks it at our level over to the, to the neighboring row. Did I snap or not? Where we did not put any fungicide down, about 70% were snapping where we had put fungicide down. We've lowered that to about 15 to 50 percent just depending on the products, it and whatnot. And this is one trial, right. So I I don't want you to be thinking that this is a this is how things are going to perform every single season, every single location, right? But I think it's really good data and just really highlights the fact that ought to be very aware at the lodging potential under heavy task spot disease pressure. In terms of yield, then for these different products, this is what we found. Say somewhere between, I think it was when 25 to 50 bushel protection, just depending on the specific product. And this is still our hear. The lauric plus lunar privileges is an approximation for the Delaro complete, which is a newer product from from buyer. Thank you. I just wanted to point that out there. Something also. We looked at two with the, the land or under there the farmer is to look at communication. So he's a very good producer. Has, has worked pretty, has a good pivot set up and we have good confidence in his ability for communication. He put on well Tamar, seven ounces with with 1 tenth of an inch through the pivot and we had Check area with no fungicide. He did two different applications. One on the 22nd, an obvious in the second application on part of the field, August 12. Um, and you might be other try and pick which parts of the field. This is our variety trials in small plot work that we did with him. And then he's got fumigation in this, this large field here and this other 10 acre field below. One of the things that he did do was plan a susceptible hybrid. And again, this highlights the importance of picking the best hybrid you can intended task bot resistance. So even with two fungicide applications via fumigation, susceptible hybrid is looking a lot sicker than that. Better hybrid. And you can see there's this kind of a line down the field here. Because of that, you can say this corner, this north, northwest corner looked a lot better. Or wisdom that ultimate application, even compared to this check below it, it did not receive any fungicide. And just in terms of yields there, the check in this particular field yield about a 190 bushels or with adult them, a single application are 207. And it was hard to get a good read up in this part of the field just because you have the susceptible hybrid in there. But the two applications down here, we're about to 20 bushels. All right, and then just a quick note. For Lyndon, you've got to make sure you've got all those safety systems in place. If you get it came a guy, backflow, prevention valves, etc. I'll leave it at that because we're short on time. But again, you know, whether it's going to be a driver and that's that's certainly out of your hands. But the being mindful of what you're doing intend to irrigation. And then hybrid, select the best hybrid you can for next season. And then scout for well time fungicide applications. You're going to typically fall between R1 through to R3, maybe as late as our fall. But you've gotta be careful with this disease because it can get, get going and escalate pretty quickly. And then suddenly towards the end of the season scale. For lodging potential. So with that. I'll I'll leave it at that and take any questions that you might have. Yes, If anyone has a question, please, and they're edited into the chat or the Q&A foil, if you would please. While we're waiting for someone else to chime in, the question I hear from producers, are we going to have to treat twice this year? A lot of fungicide went on this week. And you're not granting many promises in late August, right? Right. So one of the issues with fungicide application that you certainly not down the amount of disease that's currently they are. But you only see a couple of weak protection of that follies and then disease starts to increase again, right? And you can see that in these slides here, say Yes, these, these fungicide treatments knocked down the amount of disease, but it does start to increase again, right? And then some of these look the same as the untreated check. Once we get into the beginning of September 7th, really comes back to the weather. Are we going to have conditions at a very conducive for disease in late August and early September if sorrow. And you have a very susceptible hybrid in that second application, may be money well spent, but it comes down to those factors in their very obviously very hard to predict, just like the weather. Got a couple of questions coming in. So, The question there about can planting density contribute to disease? Certainly can. So you might think that yeah, like a high density a call and it's going to create a mark that's humid canopy and create more tough spot. Well, it's actually the opposite, which was yeah, we were somewhat surprised by that. If we're thinking about white mold and yes, in soybeans, absolutely. The density you pack those veins, the more that humid under canopy you create better conditions so those mushrooms to be produced. But what we've seen with tar spot is once you start dropping that population, it tends to favor uptake in passport disease development. In terms of putting in economics to it that's a little bit difficult and it's going to, again, hybrid resistance. And and whether you're going to be some of the driving factors there. I will probably continue planting as you share it based on best agronomic practices and yield potential. But yeah, like a lot more plant density and can potentially contribute to greater disease development. So can I working on some work to try and understand that a bit better this year. Are there any other questions from RD or for any of our panelists? Can probably put up the credits, right? Yeah. I think I'll do that. I think I have a quick slide here if Marnie, if you can. Yeah, I've stopped sharing. Says she's carrying. I can try to try to do this. I'm not great at it. We'll see how it goes. So while you're working on that, what's the plan for RUP credits? We're going to go to a link and fill out a survey that asks all the questions to branch you the credit, correct? I think we're going to do this here. We're going to change a little bit today so that we can make sure that we know what we're doing correctly here. See if it does do that. We go back up a page. Okay? So what we'd like you guys to do if you want RUP credit for this session, we did get we were approved for one credit from the state of Michigan. Like you to fill out an email with the following information. Basically just has your last name, your first name, the seminar date, the seminar code, certification number, whether a push commercial or private applicator. And then category credit one, 1A, 1B, or 1C. Remember that private is basically just a private core. And if you can, and I would like to have you email these to Melissa Franklin at MSU Extension. And her email is at frank126@msu.edu. So couple of ways to do this. You can either screen capture this, this, this screen if you want to save that, so you can write those things down or we'll leave this up for a little bit. And you're welcome to. Take this information and put it into an email form. In an email, it's Melissa and she will make sure that you get your credits. So Ruiz, She might want to read the seminar code in case some ways on the phone. Oh, yes, we can absolutely do that. So the seminar code again is 18037. A is an apple 0, 1. And again, we need to name first and last is similar deeds, which is today, which is July 21st, 2021, and your certification number, whether it's private or commercial, in the category. If you're a commercial, which when you need so the e-mail address again, it's frank126@msu.edu that you goodwill limited. What else do we have coming up in two weeks? Well, I'm looking through some of the questions from people that when they registered, they were talking about new sprinkler head technology for strawberries and other things. There's couple of questions about same thing. I think we're going to ask Dr. Rodney Fernandez to try to join us either next session or the one after talk about sprinkler technologists for harder culture. There was a question that came in about disease, primarily on Alt, pumpkins, corn, soybeans, and strawberries, right? A wide variety there. Marty, I'm assuming that in all our cases of fungal disease, heaping than the plant as dry as possible or watering as few times as possible is probably the best management strategy, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, they some of the exceptions to that might be powdery mildew yours. When it was really dry, we actually had a lot of powdery mildew blowing up in the weight before his reign started towards the end of June name. But that, that's really the, the, the exception of moist other diseases are really five. And by wet conditions, I just need that for this poll is the Gemini and infect the plant. And I think that's why a lot of strawberries now our trickle irrigated to avoid getting them wet. Abso, absolutely. And it's why we might make the argument. Even for me, I enjoy being saved production out west because hopefully got in trouble at that. All we have moisture and reduce them, the seed borne diseases. But I think it's always the case, but, but, you know, that's, that's one of the arguments for that as well. Environments such a huge draw them. And just like your picture of the pivot outfitted to water the ground and not the crop. If we could reduce that foliar went in time period. The other thing we've talked a little bit about, if you have the capacity, try to water, so we're not getting an additional wedded period, which would mean if the crops are already wet, which most of these moist mornings, it's already wet at nine or eight or nine o'clock. So if you'd started irrigating for three hours at six o'clock, you have it extended or increased the amount of wet in time that crop is experienced. Our to do and fetal crafts, but maybe some of the variety of things that are listed there. I've got one thing here. For Dean boss Dean you there's a lot of question about whether it's worth the money to pay for interceding during August. If it's an early season crop that would be off during September, am I better off to spread and disk after harvest versus spending money for fly NAND or a high boy seeding during August? Yeah. I guess. I mean, if it's an early harvested, I would probably pick your cover crop that fits that cover crops of fit that window pretty good. Save them money. The only, the benefits you get from interceding is particularly if you fly it on. You reduce compaction. You'll have another field path. Second, if you've got irrigation, you could water in it and get it growing. Which a lot of cases, people fly, fly on or use a high boy and they don't get the rain and it just sits there and doesn't doesn't happen. And part of the reason you might want to do that, it just depends on how busy is your scheduled at harvest. What did you got lined up here? Because what we find is It's easy to have good intentions. But if harvests gets drawn out, there's some problems. And then you get into harvest a year, fall and fall crops as well. And all sudden you just didn't get it in or you're getting it in later than you anticipated. And those cover crops may not be appropriate for that later time. So the one thing you gain by doing it before harvest is you do it at a time where you don't have as much going on and you can get it done yet a goal and get the crop off and then open it up to sunlight and it'll take off. That may be worth a little bit to you, but I would say by fire, probably the cheapest way to do it as the way to harvest. And for the more cost effective way of doing it would be the way to harvest. Spread it out in discussion. Thank you. Back to Marty. Marty, and this guy's a seed dealer, if I remember him right. Where do you get good information on the resistance of varieties? So this, this year we're going to see indexes that will tell us that it's tough spot resistance or is there something already out there in those see books that tell us the vulnerability? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, really, I think it's a matter of putting a bit of oppression back on your seed dealer and then then going up the child to request that information, right? We do we are doing some primary screening for a couple of companies so that they have better confidence in how those hybrids perform in Michigan. So I would soy beans like white model and an SDS or even actually, well, that's a good point to discuss. Bigger picture. I mean, even this year we've had some issues like if I taught for a lot of issues with Phytopharm root rot in soybeans, right? You go back to the catalog and some of those varieties have the signed numbers. So that should be the sign bit different. You talk to any agronomist for that company and they're like, Oh yeah, I know that there's a difference, but we're talking about big organizations, right? And I think sometimes it's hard to get that information. There's challenges at the company level, right? Because varieties attending I'm going quickly all these new herbicide traits change over and germplasm inside of that died necessarily have that many ease of information in here and then for us to screen and we created, but then that information is going to be good in a couple of years as those hybrids Yeah, role in roll out. Sorry, there's some challenges that I think it's definitely you need to ask, right? You need to if it's not in the candle or even if it isn't the catalog and you've had issues, any issues to task, but you need to ask, you need to keep pushing for that. It's just as important is looking at the big yield numbers and everything. It's critical. I know there's like pioneer has impact bonds and said I will have better information and ask R to Calvin and everyone else like that, they work on it. But it's keep asking her years. I mean, 2018, we had a bad year. Or is it years like that that really count as far as the screening? Yeah. So that's part of the challenge, right? Like when we're talking about any type of disease you've gotta have good screening in. Sometimes you can do the perfect Why did not get disease that has set up a disease trial, right? And very often it can be very frustrating for a lot of work in. And so companies experience that the university sometimes experiences that too. We've got a good thought. It worked out very well for us last year and I'm hugging him and it looks like it's going to work out really well again this year, but yeah, that's that's been a challenge. Like if I just had that material out there in the location with the top spot severity. And we've been in talks with other companies about like we need to be screening material for them. So yeah, that that's part of the problem. So Maria, I'm looking at the the pipe data from across the Midwest and it looks like we seem to be still ground 0 for terrorist bottom. You to know there's been some found in other places too. Oh, yeah. It's just we're looking more. And I think we've had more impacts, more yield yield issues maybe because of irrigation. Yeah, I mean, I think it's yeah, it's a couple of different factors, purse, but I mean, I agree fully. Hey, it yeah, it looks a little bit worrying. Looking at what we're seeing. We definitely are looking more than what we have been in the past. So that's, that's one reason why we're seeing more of it. But I mean, it's out and sorry. The thing that worries me is that we are seeing it just far more widespread than what we have in the past versus talking about this map, right? Have a lot of confirmations already. Inside the eye like 2019, we had said that the prefix out a lot of moisture and the start of the season and then I just continued. The thing that was different in 2019, inoculum is primarily on the west side of the state. Now we've got pretty heavy levels of inoculum through the central part of the state and more developing in the thumb region as well. So that's the thing that's concerning. And again, it just really comes back to how the environment plays out. And even last year in to buy north of that Gratiot County, right? Ionia, either side of Ionia. Whenever we hit Moisture. In chimps, a rifle, that's where we had some yield loss coming in. It's estimated that 30 bushel yield loss. I'm in a couple of fields inside of Ionia there. And it was because we had heavier rainfall in August, July and August and September are going to be some that critical months, especially July and August agenda rifle. And I've got video. I have this feel near i RNA here and just clouds of task spot come and offer that passport spores when it's being combined in an estimated 30 bushel loss because it's a dry land field. Because I have a lot of press hip in August. That's weren't really drive it. Say Yeah. I appreciate because intend on yeah. It's pretty obvious that that those what conditions right. The drive the disease and the sooner that, I guess the reality of it is probably a lot of the yield loss happens when, when the, when the real crush of that infection occurs and of width growth stage, the corns added in there. So right. Yeah. And and the challenge with that fungicide application now, should I pull the trigger or not? Yeah, Maybe I showed you an example where it's saved the pie, that 25 to 50 bushels. But you're trying to protect for wage for another couple of months yet, right? Right. We're not we're not apples were not horticulture where we spray and I 10 times a year or whatever it is, right? We can do it a couple of times, but really not much more than that because it's too expensive. So it's a tail and that's for sure. Yeah, it more than the sum just to change it. So just briefly in there we had lots of moisture, obviously over the last couple of weeks. When we think about why mold starting early in the canopy, but some of these plants were planted pretty early and got fairly sizable. You're still concerned about that? Scores up even further up the Getting Started further away. Moles? Yeah, official. My guys are up there to die spraying out fielding want com for O2 under irrigation to fungicide application timing where a little bit lighter in that, that vacation and I just got some Fido is actually a white mold actually on soybean plants already. I think, yeah, in general. Because it was dry early, I think. Most of the Apophis, you're coming in a little bit lighter and my student has been out looking at finding eyes Apophis year now. So yeah. I mean, if you're still within that window, yeah, you gotta be pretty much between R1 and still in R3, you got plenty of flowers. It might be worth fungicide application, especially if they've had a history of y mod p. Now you've got that feel that it's got issues. The rainfall, just the tunnels, even even in places where we had fairly heavy rain and mean it's just a wildly seeds came from this cloudbursts even within those general overall storm. So you can see where it's going to be highly variable if you look across the landscape and different counties, different areas? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Marty, maybe we get just do this again tomorrow for the field crops. Virtual brush was crazy. Talked a little bit about that tomorrow for anyone that would care to join his We're will be on the line live at seven AM to do the virtual breakfast because field crops team, thanks for reminding me. That's also an excellent opportunity if you want a real weather forecast or agriculture. Dr. Jeff Andreessen does a tremendous job on Thursday mornings, walking us through the past week of weather and what's expected the next week. So that's, that's a lot of this irrigation as we talk here, where dependent on what that weathers done and what it's going to do so that that works out. Great. There's a few questions that were sent in by email. I'll work through those. There is a discussion about solids in water. I think we're talking about trickle irrigation plugging there and how pH affects irrigation. I'll send those to people a discussion about using acid treatments for trickle irrigation to neutralize water. We do have pH issues in overhead irrigation, but to most part, we just we just use less lime and irrigated soils than we do in their dry land component or comparisons. And there's a few places that when we're using micronutrients, we want to balance pH using an acid. So there's injects sulfuric acid and low rates to balance the water before we put it in the micronutrients. I'll send email or text messages or emails to those people that sent those questions in same one I seen one of discussing nozzle adjustments and uniformity testing. We'll talk to you a little bit, send something out about uniformity, center pivots and how to make corrections, how to identify the problems and make corrections. So our next meeting is young son of a support me. And I believe Mark long straws visiting, talking to us about irrigation, the fruit industry. And we'll see if Dr. Tom Fernandez can help us some irrigation and, or IT industry and some of the new overhead irrigation systems developments. And he has to us as well, if not, thank you for joining us and mark the fourth on your calendar and we'll be back again with some more good information and irrigation.