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Cool conditions during planting season increase the potential for herbicide injury to seedlings due to slow emergence and reduced ability of the crop to metabolize herbicides. While herbicides may be responsible for emergence issues, most problems that have been brought to our attention seem to...
Planting conditions in northern Iowa, especially north of highway 20, is experiencing delays due to abundant rainfall. Corn planting progress is currently at 40% across the northern crop reporting districts compared to 65% and 70% for the state and 5-year average (...
#Plant18 continues to progress across the state. According to Monday’s USDA Crop Progress Report, approximately 40% of Iowa’s expected corn crop has been...
Over the weekend, someone let me know they saw a western corn rootworm adult. Remember this pest overwinters as an egg that hatches in June! They get confused with closely-related species every spring: striped cucumber beetle. Striped and spotted cucumber beetles overwinter as adults and become...
It has been a slow start to #Plant18 in Iowa. The cooler and wet weather has kept many farmers out of the fields despite the fact that it is getting to be the end of April. Spring finally seems to have arrived (or at least for parts of Iowa), and with that farmers are not wasting anytime getting...
The 29th David W. Staniforth Memorial Lecture was presented by Dr. Fred Gould on April 3rd. The lecture was titled "Will Genetically Engineered Pests Protect Health, Biodiversity, and Crop Production?". Dr. Gould is the Co-director of the Genetic Engineering and Society...
Green cover crop fields are slowly starting to appear across the state. Despite the recent snow that fell across the state, #plant18 is right around the corner. Farmers should have a game plan in place for how they plan to terminate their overwintering cover crop. Killing cover crops with a...
It is important to keep stored grain cool as we go into the spring and summer months. Some warming of stored grain may have already occurred during warmer weather and with the sun shining on the south side of grain bins.
With the weather forecast for Friday through next Tuesday...
Insecticide-resistant soybean aphids have emerged as a new challenge to farmers throughout the upper Midwest. In a new regional publication, we suggest strategies for managing soybean aphids resistant to pyrethroid insecticides. A few key points for managing aphids are:
Pest resistance is a world-wide challenge from hospitals to farm fields. I recently spent several days in the hospital battling an internal bacterial infection, which required intravenous antibiotics. I noted that the medical staff:
A collection of educational resources to help people on farms, orchards, forests, and other agricultural establishments comply with EPA’s revised Worker Protection Standard (WPS) regulation is now available online at http://pesticideresources.org/wps...
The IPM team at Iowa State University has been monitoring for field crop pests for a long time. The target pests have changed over the years, but the goal always remains the same: help inform farmers about pest activity in Iowa. One long-standing...
Iowa State University Extension and Outreach published the Field Crop Scouting book as an online learning tool for crop scouts and other ag professionals in Iowa. This interactive textbook allows individuals to acquire knowledge about multiple crop scouting topics to help create stronger crop...
If you are interested in an in-depth course covering soil fertility and nutrient management, then consider attending the Iowa State University Extension and Outreach 2018 Soil Fertility and Nutrient Management Short Course. This is a two-day event that provides an opportunity to dig deeper into...
Dicamba has been an important component of Iowa weed management systems for more than 40 years. The history of its use is somewhat unique in that its popularity has ebbed and flowed over time. The increase in herbicide resistant weeds combined with the introduction of dicamba-resistant soybean...
At the recent North Central Weed Science Society annual meeting I was asked to provide the opening presentation (A historical perspective on dicamba) in a symposium focusing on issues with dicamba. Following are the slides and the abstract of my presentation.
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The Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Soil Fertility web site has undergone a recent redesign and update. The site was updated, but the URL has remained the same (http...
The number of acres planted to cover crops annually has been steadily increasing in recent years throughout the United States. Meanwhile, the soybean cyst nematode (SCN) continues to sit atop of the U.S. list of yield-suppressing pathogens. It’s no coincidence, then, that there is an increasing...
There have been many reports of corn along the edge of the fields yielding drastically less than the remainder of the field. In many cases, the yield loss is most obvious on the southern edge of the field, but it has been observed along the west, east, and north sides of fields this year. This...
Up to this point in the harvest season we have been short on grain dry down and cooling weather. Corn moisture percentages have been hanging in the 20’s, sometimes in the upper 20’s. This past week eliminated much of the moisture, but favorable field dry down weather rarely continues into...
I’ve received lots of inquiries in the past few weeks about sampling fields for nematodes that feed on corn. Most every Iowa field has one or more different nematode species present at low numbers. But it’s only when numbers are at damaging levels that yield loss will occur.
Unfortunately...
I grew up watching the television show Quincy, M.E. Jack Klugman starred as a Los Angeles County medical examiner in the mystery-thriller, one-hour show as Quincy who had to solve mysterious deaths. I would argue this show set the tone for future shows such as "CSI: Crime Scene...
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been doing stalk rot assessments at several of the ISU Research Farms including the Southeast Research and Demonstration Farm, the McNay Research Farm, and the Ames Farm. While the plants seemed to be standing well, minus where the raccoons had fun in one of...
If you would like to learn more about current soil fertility issues and research being conducted at universities across the North Central region, then consider attending the 47th Annual North Central Extension-Industry Soil Fertility Conference to be held November 15-16, 2017, from 1:00 p.m. to...
This week, my technician Greg VanNostrand found a black widow in our storage Quonset at the ISU Johnson Research Farm. The farm is just south of Ames in Story County. She is an adult female and had a pile of dead body fragments below her web. Needless to say, she was healthy and happy in the...