An extension plant pathologist is providing corn farmers evaluations of fungicides from 2024.
Dr. Alison Robertson with Iowa State University says she works with crop protection companies to set up trials across various locations in the state.
“The prominent diseases that we had were tar spot and southern rust. I had pretty good disease development, and that’s always good because when I have disease then I’m able to collect data that I can then use to compare fungicides.”
She tells Brownfield newer commercial fungicides proved more effective in high disease pressure environments.
“So things like Delaro Complete, Miravis Neo, and Veltyma. They did do very well at all of the locations, and were arguably better than some of the other products that I tested at those locations.”
Robertson says the data over 15 years of trials continues to show the best time to apply a fungicide to reduce disease is at silking, and depending on the product, one application can be enough to protect grain fill.
