Tar Spot Detected Earlier Than Ever Before in Indiana
Tar spot has been confirmed now in 10 counties across Indiana by Dr. Darcy Telenko’s Purdue Field Crop Pathology Lab according to the map on her website. She was our guest on the Purdue Crop Chat Podcast last week with Dan ‘Corn’ Quinn and ‘Soybean Shaun’ Casteel. This is the earliest she’s detected tar spot in Indiana.
“Most of the areas where we found tar spot, it’s still at a very low severity level, maybe one or two spots on a leaf. So, that’s still really low. So yes, we found tar spot. It was June 10th, 11th, I guess is where we were. That being said, where we found it in our research plots was my April planted corn. We planted about the 25th of April and that’s the corn where we’re finding it right now. I don’t think they found it in our May planting yet.”
Telenko shares her advice for tar spot management from her years of research.
“Generally, we’re saying we’re not going to spray fungicides for tar spot until at least V10. I still want to hold on, actually, until we get silks and tassels out there really to spray, because looking at the corn prices, I really want one well-timed fungicide application to manage this disease.”
She knows some farmers want to pull the trigger now on fungicides, but she urges some patience and offers a tool to help.
“Look at the Tarspotter app. We’ve been working on it. We’re on version five where we continue to pull the weather data and try to predict when the disease is going to be active and moving in the canopy. I would say this last week of heat and dryness, that probably slowed things down a little bit. So, let’s just hold on and see where that goes.”
Take a listen to the Purdue Crop Chat Podcast now below, in the free HAT mobile app, or wherever you listen to podcasts. We talk agronomy, tar spot, white mold, other corn and soybean diseases, and still manage to have some fun with it too. Just search Hoosier Ag Today in your app store to download the app.
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