The Iowa State University (ISU) Crops Team has announced its 2026–2027 winter programming schedule and opened sponsorship opportunities for industry partners to support agronomic, conservation, and farm profitability education reaching thousands of stakeholders across Iowa and in other states. Sponsorships support programs that deliver research-based information to the agricultural community.

Significant engagement and proven impact from the 2025–2026 season include: 

The Hodgson lab regularly scouts for field crop insect pests during the summer, which includes monitoring the distribution of new pests. Sometimes this effort is part of a regional grant, but occasionally it is for our own interest. This article shares the updated distribution maps for soybean gall midge and soybean tentiform leafminer in Iowa with detections from the 2026 growing season.

Have you ever wondered what a particular plant or insect is in your field, yard, or garden? We have all been there, and we have great news: a new tool is available for farmers everywhere! Iowa State University's Pest ID App is now available. Developed by ISU researchers, the Pest ID app uses deep learning models trained on millions of images to recognize weeds and insects directly from your photo.

Agronomists across the state are opening corn ears for yield and disease assessments and are surprised by western bean cutworm larvae feeding inside. Western bean cutworm is one of several caterpillars found in corn ears this time of year, but people are seeing them more frequently in recent years. Western bean cutworm was historically a common pest that caused economic injury to corn in Iowa in the early 2000s, but sightings have been rare since 2009.