An extension agronomist says fungicide application strategies vary from farm to farm.
Iowa State University’s Meaghan Anderson tells Brownfield…
“I’m sure a lot of growers have different strategies that they approach,” she said. “There’s a lot of folks that will apply a fungicide regardless of what the weather forecast looks like. With a lot of applications, you kind of just have to get in line and get things sprayed during the appropriate timeframe.”
She says research shows the optimal time to apply is at tasseling, or the VT stage, in corn – and the R3 pod setting stage for soybeans.
“A really critical piece of the puzzle that we always look for every year trying to make that evaluation ahead of time is to whether we expect we will have bad enough disease issues to provide an ROI when it comes to those fungicide applications.”
Anderson says in some instances an application at R2-R3 may be required if disease pressure remains high.
