Blog

Summer has arrived, and temperatures are heating up. Agricultural and natural resource workers endure long days spent outdoors or running field days. Summer outdoor activities are in full force for many including festivals, fairs, sports, farmer’s markets and much more! Time spent outside in the...

The most effective way to make treatments decisions for pests with chewing mouthparts (e.g., Japanese beetle, bean leaf beetle, caterpillars, and grasshoppers) is to estimate defoliation. I’m a “lumper” and don’t try too hard to distinguish feeding by species. Replicated data over multiple...

I’ve been hearing about and seeing a variety of caterpillars in seedling crops this week. In soybean, you notice thistle caterpillars feeding and making webbed cavities from the leaves. They can be easy to find in early-vegetative soybean but rarely build up to economic populations. Read more...

Mother Nature was more cooperative this past week, allowing planting and other field activities like cutting and putting up hay, sidedressing, and herbicide applications to occur. According to the ...

This #Plant19 season has been a tough and complicated one, filled with difficult deadlines, unconventional practices and budget constraints. And while it might be seem easier to just give up, it's seasons like these that teach us important lessons about farming, and give us the opportunity to...

#plant19 has been a year to remember, and not necessarily in a good way. A couple of days ago we talked about anthracnose leaf blight on corn. Although we...

With some planting progress still stalled, many of you are probably finding ways to pass the time, possibly scrolling through Twitter. Adding to some of the anxiety, you’re probably seeing photos of diseased seedling corn, by the name of Anthracnose leaf blight. While last week’s...

Summer trip?! Undergraduate students commonly take trips during the summer that consists of hiking in the mountains, relaxing on the beaches, or experiencing a new culture in a foreign country. However, one group of students from Furman University in Greenville, SC broke the mold and chose...

Everyone is talking about the cool, wet spring this year. It's definitely slowed down my research projects, too. Thanks to the help of the Tylka Lab, we have about half our soybean plots in the ground. I am working on soybean aphid efficacy evaluations at the NWRF near Sutherland. I am starting...

We have always told extension clients and students that the best tool for identifying an unknown weed is a good book, other than finding somebody who already knows what the weed is.  We never thought much of the early weed ID apps that were developed for mobile devices. 

This week we begin Week 7 of moth trapping in Iowa. Significant captures of black cutworm (BCW) have occurred in several counties during weeks 3-6 of trapping (bold and * in Table 1). Significant captures occur when 8 or more BCW moths are caught in a wing-style pheromone trap over 2 nights....

According to a recent State Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act Issues Research and Evaluation Group (...